4 




1 



SHORT STUDIES 



ON 



GEEAT SUBJECTS. 



FOURTH SERIES. 



SHORT STUDIES 



ON 



GREAT SUBJECTS. 



BY y 

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 

LATE FELLOW OP EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



FOURTH SERIES. 




NEW YORK: 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

1883. 

All rights reserved. 



/ 



///i 



PREFACE. 



The present volume concludes the series which I have 
called "Short Studies on Great Subjects." The topics 
discussed are not, indeed, all great, and some are insignifi- 
cant ; but I selected the title on account of the unity of pur- 
pose which is present throughout. The Essays have been 
written at intervals, as occasion or my own general work 
suggested, during the last thirty years, and they contain 
my thoughts, cast in various forms, on the problems with 
which the present generation has been perplexed. We 
have lived through a period of change — change spiritual, 
change moral, social, and political. The foundations of 
oui most serious convictions have been broken up; and 
the disintegration of opinion is so rapid that wise men 
and foolish are equally ignorant where the close of this 
waning century will find us. We are embarked in a cur- 
rent which bears us forward independent of our own wills, 
and indifferent whether we submit or resist ; but each of 
us is sailing in a boat of his own, which, as he is hurried 
on, he can guide or leave to drift. The observations and 
experiences of a single voyager who is drawing near the 
end of his own journey may have an interest for others 
who are floating down the same river, and are alike unable 
to conjecture whither they are bound. 

J. A. F. 



Onslow Gardens, 
November 6, 1882. 



36 



T 



CONTENTS. 
-■ ♦ - - 

PAQB 

Life and Times of Thomas Becket 1 

The Oxford Counter-Reformation ...... 151 

Origen and Celsus 237 

A Cagliostro of the Second Century 282 

Cheneys and the House of Russell 312 

A Siding at a Railway Station 352 



LIFE AND TIMES 



OF 



THOMAS BECKET.^ 



CHAPTER I. 

Among the earliest efforts of the modern sacerdotal party 
in the Church of England was an attempt to reestablish 
the memory of the martyr of Canterbury. The sacerdotal 
party, so far as their objects were acknowledged, aspired 
only to liberate the Church from bondage to the State. 
The choice of Becket as an object of adoration was a tacit 
confession of their real ambition. The theory of Becket 
was not that the Church had a right to self-administration, 
but that the Church was the supreme administrator in this 
world, and perhaps in the next ; that the secular sword as 
well as the spiritual had been delivered to Peter ; and that 
the civil power existed only as the delegate of Peter's suc- 
cessors. If it be true that the clergy are possessed in any 
real sense of supernatural powers ; if the " keys," as they 
are called, have been actually granted to them ; if through 
them, as the ordinary and appointed channel, the will of 
God is alone made known to mankind — then Becket was 
right, and the High Churchmen are right, and kings and 
cabinets ought to be superseded at once by commissions of 

1 Materinh for the History of Thomas Btcket, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury. Edited by James Craigie Robertson, Canon of Canterbury. Pub- 
lished under the direction of the Master of the Rulls. 1876. 



2 Life and Times of 

bishops. If, on the other hand, the clergy are but like 
other orders of priesthoods in other ages and countries — 
mere human beings set apart for peculiar functions, and 
tempted by the nature of those functions into fantastic no- 
tions of their own consequence — then these recurring con- 
flicts between Church and State resolve themselves into 
phenomena of social evolution, the common sense of man- 
kind exerting itself to control a groundless assumption. To 
the student of human nature the story of such conflicts is 
always interesting — comedy and tragedy winding one into 
the other. They have furnished occasion for remarkable 
exhibitions of human character. And while Churchmen 
are raising up Becket as a brazen serpent, on which the 
world is to look to be healed of its incredulities, the incred- 
ulous world may look with advantage at him from its own 
point of »'iew, and, if unconvinced that he was a saint, may 
still find instruction in a study of his actions and his fate. 

We take advantage, then, of the publication of new ma- 
terials and the republication of old materials in an accessible 
form to draw a sketch of Becket as he appears to ourselves ; 
and we must commence with an attempt to reproduce the 
mental condition of the times in which he lived. Human 
nature is said to be always the same. It is no less true 
that human nature is continuously changing. Motives 
which in one age are languid and even unintelligible have 
been in another alive and all-powerful. To comprehend 
these difi'erences, to take them up into his imagination, to 
keep them present before him as the key to what he reads, 
1.8 the chief difficulty and the chief duty of the student of 
history. 

Characteristic incidents, particular things which men rep- 
resentative of their age indisputably did, convey a clearer 
idea than any general description. Let the reader attend 
to a few transactions which occurred either in Becket's life- 
time or immediately subsequent to it, in which the principal 
actors were persons known to himself. 



Thomas Becket. 3 

We select as the first a scene at Martel near Limoges in 
the year 1183. Henry Plantagenet, eldest son of Henry 
the Second, Prince of Wales as we should now call him, 
called then " the young king," for he was crowned in his 
father's lifetime, at that spot and in that year brought his 
disordered existence to an end. His career had been wild 
and criminal. He had rebelled against his father again 
and again; again and again he* had been forgiven. In a fit 
of remorse he had taken the cross, and intended to go to 
Jerusalem. He forgot Jerusalem in the next temptation. 
He joined himself to Lewis of France, broke once more 
into his last and worst revolt, and carried fire and sword 
into Normandy. He had hoped to bring the nobles to his 
side; he succeeded only in burning towns and churches, 
stripping shrines, and bringing general hatred on himself. 
Finding, we are told, that he could not injure his father as 
much as he had hoped to do, he chafed himself into a fever, 
and the fever killed him. Feeling death to be near, he sent 
a message to his father begging to see him. The old Henry, 
after past experience, dared not venture. The prince (I 
translate literally from a contemporary chronicler) — 

then called his bishops and religious men to his side. He con- 
fessed his sins first in private, then openly to all who were pres- 
ent. He was absolved. He gave his cross to a friend to carry 
to the Holy Sepulchre. Then, throwing ofE his soft clothing, he 
put on a shirt of hair, tied a rope about his neck, and said to 
the bishops — 

" By this rope I deliver over myself, a guilty and unworthy 
sinner, to you the ministers of God. Through your interces- 
sion and of his own ineffable mercy, I beseech our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who forgave the thief upon the cross, to have pity on 
my unhappy soul." 

A bed of ashes had been prepared on the floor. 

" Drag me," he went on, "by this rope out of this bed, and 
^ly me on the ashes." 

The bishop did so. They placed at his head axvl at his k'et 
tv'o large square stones, and so he died. 



4 Life and Times of 

There is one aspect of the twelfth century — the darkest 
crimes and the most real superstition side by side coexisting 
in the same character. 

Turn from Martel to Oxford, and go back seventeen 
years. Men who had so little pity on themselves were as 
pitiless to others. We quote from Stowe. The story is 
authenticated by contemporary chroniclers. 

1166. There came into England thirty Germans, as well men 
as women, who called themselves Publicans. Their head and 
ruler, named Gerardus, was somewhat learned; the residue very 
rude. They denied matrimony and the sacraments of baptism 
and the Lord's Supper, with other articles. They being appre- 
hended, the king caused a council to be called at Oxford, where 
the said Gerard answered for all his fellows, who being pressed 
with Scripture answered concerning their faith as they had been 
taught, and would not dispute thereof. After they could by no 
means be brought from their errors, the bishop gave sentence 
against them, and the king commanded that they should be 
marked with a hot iron in the forehead and whipped, and that 
no man should succor them with house-room or otherwise. 
They took their punishment gladly, their captain going before 
them singing, "Blessed are ye when men hate you." They 
were marked both in the forehead and the chin. Thus being 
whipped and thrust out in winter, they died with cold, no man 
relieving them. 

To the bishops of Normandy Henry Plantagenet handed 
the rope to drag him to his death-bed of ashes. Under 
sentence from the bishops of England these German here- 
tics were left to a fate more piteous than the stake. The 
privilege and authority of bishops and clergy was Becket's 
plea for convulsing Europe. What were the bishops and 
clergy like themselves? We will look at the bishops 
assembled at the Council of Westminster in the year 1176. 
Cardinal Hugezun had come as legate from Rome. The 
council was attended by the two archbishops, each accom- 
panied by his suffragans, the abbots, priors, and clergy of his 
province. Before business began, there arose dira lis ef 



Thomas Becket. 6 

contentio, a dreadful strife and contention between these 
high personages as to which archbishop should sit on the 
cardinal's right hand. Richard of Canterbury said the right 
was with him. Roger of York said the right was with him. 
Words turned to blows. The monks of Canterbury, zealous 
for their master, rushed upon the Archbishop of York, flung 
him down, kicked him, and danced upon him till he was 
almost dead. The cardinal wrung his hands, and charged 
the Archbishop of Canterbury with having set them on. 
The Archbishop of York made his way, bruised and bleed- 
ing, to the king. Both parties in the first heat appealed to 
the pope. Canterbury on second thoughts repented, went 
privately to the cardinal, and bribed him to silence. The 
appeal was withdrawn, the affair dropped, and the council 
went on with its work. 

So much for the bishops. We may add that Becket's 
friend John of Salisbury accuses the Archbishop of York, 
on common notoriety, of having committed -the most infa- 
mous of crimes, and of having murdered the partners of his 
guilt to conceal it.^ 

As to the inferior clergy, it might be enough to quote the 
language used about them at the conference at Montmiraux 
in 1169, where their general character was said to be atro- 
cious, a great number of them being church-robbers, adulter- 
ers, highwaymen, thieves, ravishers of virgins, incendiaries, 
and murderers.^ For special illustration we take a visita- 
tion of St. Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury in the year 
1173, undertaken by the pope's order. The visitors re- 
ported not only that the abbot was corrupt, extravagant, 
and tyrannical, but that he had more children than the pa- 
triarchs, in one village as many as ten or twelve bastards. 

1 John of Salisbury to the Archbishop of Sens, 1171. The Archbishop 
vf York is spoken of under the name of Caiaphas. 

'■^ " Quum tamen clerici immundissimi et atrocissimi sunt, utpote qui 
ex magna parte sacrilegi, adulteri. praedones, fures, raptores virginum, in- 
cendiarii et homicidae sunt." — J(^hn of Salisbury to the Bishop of Exeter. 
Letters, 1169. 



6 Life and Times of 

" Velut equus Mnnit in foeminas,* they said, " adeo impudens 
ut libidinem nisi quam publicaverit voliiptuosam esse non 
reputet. Matres et earundem filias incestat pariter. For- 
nication is abusum comparat necessitati." This precious ab- 
bot was the host and entertainer of the four knights when 
they came to Canterbury. 

From separate pictures we pass to a sketch of the condi- 
tion of the Church of England written by a monk of Christ 
Church, Canterbury, a contemporary of Becket, when the 
impression of the martyrdom was fresh, and miracles were 
worked by his relics every day under the writer's eyes. 
The monk's name was Nigellus. He was precentor of the 
cathedral. His opinion of the wonders of which he was the 
witness may be inferred from the shrug of the shoulders 
with which, after describing the disorders of the times, he 
says that they were but natural, for the age of miracles was 
past. In reading him we feel that we are looking on the 
old England through an extremely keen pair of eyes. We 
discern too, perhaps, that he was a clever fellow, constitu- 
tionally a satirist, and disappointed of promotion, and we 
make the necessary allowances. Two of his works survive, 
one in verse, the other in serious prose. 

The poem, which is called Speculum Stultorum ( " The 
Looking-Glass of Fools") contains the adventures of a 
monk who leaves his cloister to better his fortunes. The 
monk is introduced under the symbolic disguise of an ass. 
His ambition is to grow a longer tail, and he wanders un- 
successfully over Europe, meeting as many misfortunes as 
Don Quixote, in pursuit of his object. Finally he arrives 
at Paris, where he resolves to remain and study, that at all 
events he may write after his name magister artium. The 
seven years' course being finished, he speculates on his fut- 
ure career. He decides on the whole that he will be a 
bishop, and pictures to himself the delight of his mother 
vvhen she sees him in his pontificals. Sadly, however, he 



Thomas Becket. 7 

soon remembers that bishops were not made of such stuff 
as learned members of the universities. Bishops were born 
in barons' castles, and named as children to the sees which 
they were to occupy. " Little Bobby " and " little Willy " 
were carried to Rome in their nurses' arms before they 
could speak or walk, to have the keys of heaven committed 
to them. So young were they sometimes that a wit said 
once that it could not be told whether the bishop elect was a 
boy or a girl.^ An abbey might suit better, he thought, and 
he ran over the various attractions of the different orders. 
All of them were more or less loose rogues, some worse, some 
better.2 Qn the whole the monk-ass concluded that he 
would found a new order, the rules of which should be com- 
pounded of the indulgences allowed to each of the rest. The 
pope would consent if approached with the proper tempta- 
tions ; and he was picturing to himself the delightful life 
which he was thenceforth to lead, when his master found 
him and cudgelled him back to the stable. 

More instructive, if less amusing, is the prose treatise 
Contra Curiales et Officiales dericos ("Against Clerical 
Courtiers and Officials"), dedicated to De Longchamp, 
Bishop of Ely, Coeur de Lion's chancellor, who was left in 

1 " Ante prius patrem pvimum matremque vocare 

Quam sciat, aut possit stare vel ire pedes, 
Suscipit ecclesise claves animasque regeudas. 

In cunis positiis dummodo vagit adhuc 
Cum nutrice sua, Romam Robekimus adibit, 

Quern nova sive vetus sportula tecta feret ; 
Missus et in peram veniet Wilekinus in urbem, 

Curia Romana tota videbit eum. 
Impuberes pueros pastores ecclesiarum 

Vidimus effectos pontificesque sacros. 
Sic dixit quidam de quodam pontificando, 

Cum princeps regni solicitaret eum: 
*Est puer, et nondum discernere possumus utrum 

Foemina vel mas est, et modo praesul erit.' " 

Satirical Poems of the Twelfth Century, vol. i. p. 106. 

2 " Omnes sunt fures, quocunque charactere sacro 
Signati veniant magnif centque Deum." 



8 Life and Times of 

charge of the realm when Richard went to Palestine. De 
Longchamp's rule was brief and stormy. It lasted long 
enough, however, to induce Nigellus to appeal to him for a 
reform of the Church, and to draw a picture of it which ad- 
mirers of the ages and faith may jDrofitably study. 

At whatever period we get a clear view of the Church of 
England, it was always in terrible need of reform. In the 
twelfth century it has been held to have been at its best. 
Let us look then at the actual condition of it. 

According to Nigellus, the Church benefices in England, 
almost without exception, were either sold by the patrons 
to the highest bidders, or were given by them to their near 
relations. The presentees entered into possession more 
generally even than the bishops when children. 

Infants in cradles (says Nigellus) are made archdeacons, that 
out of the mouths of babes and sucklings praise may be per- 
fected. The child is still at the breast and he is a priest of the 
Church. He can bind and loose before he can speak, and has 
the keys of heaven before he has the use of his understanding. 
At an age when an apple is more to him than a dozen churches, 
he is set to dispense the sacraments, and the only anxiety about 
him is a fear that he may die. He is sent to no school. He is 
idle and is never whipped. He goes to Paris to be polished, 
where he learns " the essentials of a gentleman's education," 
dice and dominoes, et ccBtera quce sequuntur. He returns to Eng- 
land to hawk and hunt, and would that this were the worst ! but 
he has the forehead of a harlot, and knows not to be ashamed. 
To such persons as these a bishop without scruple commits the 
charge of souls — to men who are given over to the flesh, who 
rise in the morning to eat, and sit down at evening to drink, 
who spend on loose women the offerings of the faithful, who do 
things which make their people blush to speak of them, while 
the/ themselves look for the Jordan to flow into their mouths, 
and expect each day to hear a voice say to them, " Friend, go 
up higher." 

Those who had no money to buy their way with, and no 
^•iends to help them, were obliged to study something. 



Thomas Becket. 9 

Having done with Paris they would go on to Bologna, and 
3ome back knowing medicine and law and speaking pure 
French and Italian. Clever fellows, so furnished, contrived 
to rise by pushing themselves into the service of bishop or 
baron, to whom " they were as eyes to the blind and as feet 
to the lame." They managed the great man's business; 
they took care of his health. They went to Rome with his 
appeals, undertook negotiations for him in foreign courts, 
and were repaid in time by prebends and rectories. Others, 
in spite of laws of celibacy, married a patron's daughter, 
and got a benefice along with her. It was illegal, but the 
bishops winked at it. Others made interest at Rome with 
the cardinals, and by them were recommended home. 
Others contrived to be of use to the king. Once on the 
road to preferment the ascent was easy. The lucky ones, 
not content with a church or two, would have a benefice in 
every diocese in England, and would lie, cheat, " forget God, 
and not remember man." Their first gains were spent in 
bribes to purchase more, and nothing could satisfy them. 
Fifteen or twenty rectories were not enough without a stall 
in each cathedral. Next must come a deanery, and then 
an archdeaconry, and then " peradventure God will yet add 
unto me something more." 

The " something more " was of course a bishopric, and 
Nigellus proceeds to describe the methods by which such of 
these high offices were reached as had not been already as- 
signed to favorites. The prelates expectant hung about the 
court, making presents, giving dinners, or offering their ser- 
vices for difficult foreign embassies. Their friends meanwhile 
were on the watch for sees likely to be vacant, and inquir- 
ing into their values. The age and health of the present 
occupants were diligently watched ; the state of their teeth, 
their eyes, their stomachs, and reported disorders. If the 
accounts were conflicting, the aspirant would go himself to 
the spot under pretence of a pilgrimage. If the wretched 
bishop was found inconveniently vigorous, rumors were 



10 Life ci'nd Times of 

spread that he was shamming youth, that he was as old as 
Nestor, and was in his dotage ; if he was infirm, it was said 
that men ought not to remain in positions of which they 
could not discharge the duties ; they should go into a clois- 
ter. The king and the primate should see to it. 

If intrigue failed, another road was tried. The man of 
the world became a saint. He retired to one or other of 
his churches. He was weary of the earth and its vanities, 
and desired to spend his remaining days in meditating upon 
heaven. The court dress was laid aside. The wolf clothed 
himself in a sheepskin, and the talk was only of prayers and 
ostentatious charities. Beggars were fed in the streets, the 
naked were clothed, the sick were visited, the dead were 
buried. The rosy face grew pale, the plump cheeks be- 
came thin, and the admiring public exclaimed, " Who was 
like unto this man to keep the law of the Most High ? " 
Finally some religious order was entered in such a manner 
that it should be heard of everywhere. Vows were taken 
with an affectation of special austerities. The worthy per- 
son (who cannot see and hear him ?) would then bewail the 
desolations of the Church, speak in a low sad voice, sigh, 
walk slowly, and droop his eyelids ; kings were charged 
with tyranny, and priests with incontinency, and all this 
that it might be spoken of in high places, that, when a see 
was vacant at last, it might be said to him, " Friend, go up 
higher ; ' he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.' " 

" Such," said Nigellus, " are the steps in our days by which 
men go up into the house of the Lord." By one or other 
of these courses success was at last attained ; the recom- 
mendation of the Crown was secured, and the nomination 
was sent to the chapter. But the conge d'elire was not yet 
peremptory. The forms of liberty still retained some 
shadow of life in them, and fresh efforts were required to 
obtain the consent of the electors. The religious orders 
were the persons used on these occasions to produce the re- 
quired effect; and flights of Templars, Cistercians, Carthu- 



Thomas Becket. 11 

sians, hurried to the Cathedral city to persuade the canons 
that the pastor whom they had never seen or never heard 
of, except by rumor, had more virtues than existed together 
in any other human being. Nigellus humorously describes 
the language in which these spiritual jackals portrayed their 
patron's merits. 

He is a John the Baptist for sanctity, a Cato for wisdom, a 
Tully for eloquence, a Moses for meekness, a Phineas for zeal, 
an Abraham for faith. Elect him only, and he is all that you 
can desire. You ask what he has done to recommend him. 
Granted that he has done nothing, God can raise sons to Abra- 
ham out of the stones. He is a boy, you say, and too young 
for such an office ; Daniel was a boy when he saved Susannah 
from the elders. He is of low birth ; you are choosing a succes- 
sor to a fisherman, not an heir to Coesar. He is a dwarf; Jere- 
miah was not large. He is illiterate ; Peter and Andrew were 
not philosophers when they were called to be apostles. He can 
speak no English ; Augustine could speak no English, yet Au- 
gustine converted Britain. He is married and has a wife ; the 
apostles ordered such to be promoted. He has divorced his 
wife ; Christ separated St. John from his bride. He is immoral ; 
so Avas St. Boniface. He is a fool; God has chosen the foolish 
things of this world to confound the wise. He is a coward; St. 
Joseph was a coward. He is a glutton and a wine-bibber ; so 
Christ was said to be. He is a slugo-ard ; St. Peter could not 
remain for an hour awake. He is a striker; Peter struck 
Malchus. He is quarrelsome ; Paul quarreled with Barnabas. 
He is disobedient to his superiors ; Paul withstood Peter. He is 
a man of blood; Moses killed the Egyptian. He is blind; so 
was Paul before he Avas converted. He is dumb; Zacharias was 
dumb. He is all faults, and possesses not a single virtue; God 
will make his grace so much more to abound in him. 

Such eloquence and such advocates were generally irre- 
sistible. If, as sometimes happened, the Crown had named 
a person exceptionally infamous, or if the chapter was ex- 
ceptionally obdurate, other measures lay behind. Govern- 
ment officers would come down and talk of enemies to the 
commonwealth. A bishop of an adjoining see would hint 



12 Life and Times of 

at excommunication. The canons were worked on sep- 
arately, bribed, coaxed, or threatened. The younger of 
them were promised the places of the seniors. The seniors 
were promised fresh offices for themselves, and promotion 
for their relations. If there were two candidates and two 
parties, both sides bribed, and the longest purse gained the 
day. Finally the field was won. Decent members of the 
chapter sighed over the disgrace, but reflected that miracles 
could not be looked for.^ The see could not remain vacant 
till a saint could be found to fill it. They gave their voices 
as desired. The choice was declared, the bells rang, the 
organ pealed, and the choir chanted Te Deum. 

The one touch necessary to complete the farce was then 
added : — 

The bishop elect, all in tears for joy, exclaims, " Depart from 
me, for I am a sinful man. Depart from me, for I am unworthy. 
I cannot bear the burden which you lay upon me. Alas for 
my calamity! Let me alone, my beloved brethren — let me 
alone in my humble state. You know not what you do." .... 
He falls back and affects to swoon. He is borne to the arch- 
bishop to be consecrated. Other bishops are summoned to 
assist, and all is finished. ^ 

The scene now changed. The object was gained, the 
mask was dropped, and the bishop, having reached the goal 
of his ambition, could afford to show himself in his true 
colors. 

He has bound himself (goes on Nigellus) to be a teacher of 
his flock. How can he teach those whom he sees but once a 
year, and not a hundredth part of whom he even sees at all? 
If any one in the diocese wants the bishop, he is told the bishop 
is at court on affairs of state. He hears a hasty mass once a 

1 "Non sunt haec miraculorum tempora." 

2 Now and then it happened that bishops refused to attend on these 
occasions, when the person to be consecrated was notoriously infamous. 
Nigellus says that one bishop at least declined to assist at the consecra- 
tion of Roger, Archbishop of York. 



Thomas Becket. 13 

day, non sine tcedio (not without being bored). The rest of his 
time he gives to business or pleasure, and is not bored. The 
rich get justice from him ; the poor get no justice. If his met- 
ropolitan interferes with him, he appeals to Rome, and Rome 
protects him if he is willing to pay for it. At Rome the abbot 
buys his freedom from the control of the bishop ; the bishop 
buys his freedom from the control of the archbishop. The 
bishop dresses as the knights dress. When his cap is on you 
cannot distinguish him at council from a peer. The layman 
swears, the bishop swears, and the bishop swears the hardest. 
The layman hunts, the bishop hunts. The layman hawks, the 
bishop hawks. Bishop and layman sit side by side at council 
and Treasury boards. Bishop and layman ride side by side into 
battle.^ What will not bishops do? Was ever crime more 
atrocious than that which was lately committed in the church at 
Coventry ? ^ When did pagan ever deal with Christian as the 
bishop did with the monks? I, Nigellus, saw with my own eyes, 
after the monks were ejected, harlots openly introduced into the 
cloister and chapter house to lie all night there, as in a brothel, 
with their paramours.^ Such are the works of bishops in these 
days of ours. This is what they do, or permit to be done ; and 
so cheap has grown the dignity of the ecclesiastical order that 
you will easier find a cowherd well educated than a presbyter, 
and an industrious duck than a literate parson. 

So far Nigellus. We are not to suppose that the state of 
the Church had changed unfavorably in the twenty years 

1 Even in the discharge of their special functions the spiritual character 
was scarcely more apparent. When they went on visitation, and children 
were brought to them to be confirmed, they gave a general blessing and 
did not so much as alight from their horses. Becket was the only prelate 
who observed common decency on these occasions. " Non enim erat ei 
ut plerisque, immo ut fere omnibus episcopis moris est, ministerium con- 
firmationis equo insidendo peragere, sed ob sacramenti venerationem equo 
desilire et stando pueris manum imponere." — Mateiiah for the History 
of Thomas Becket, vol. ii. p. 164. 

2 In the year 1191, Hugh, Bishop of Coventry, violently expelled the 
monks from the cathedral there, and instituted canons in their places. 

3 " Testis mihi Deus est quod dolens et tristis admodum refero quod in 
ecclesia Coventrensi oculis propriis aspexi. In claustro et capitulo vidi 
ego et alii nonnuUi ejectis monachis meretrices publico introductas et tota 
nocte cum lenouibus decubare sicut in lupanari." 



14 Life and Times of 

which followed Becket's martyrdom, or we should have to 
conclude that the spiritual enthusiasm which the martyrdom 
undoubtedly excited had injured, and not improved, public 
morality. 

The prelates and clergy with whom Henry the Second 
contended, if different at all from those of the next genera- 
tion, must have been rather worse than better, and we cease 
to be surprised at the language in which the king spoke of 
them at Montmiraux. 

Speaking generally, at the time when Becket' declared 
war against the State, the Church, from the Vatican to the 
smallest archdeaconry, was saturated with venality. The 
bishops were mere men of the world. The Church bene- 
fices were publicly bought and sold, given away as a provi- 
sion to children, or held in indefinite numbers by ambitious 
men who cared only for wealth and power. The mass of 
the common clergy were ignorant, dissolute, and lawless, 
unable to be legally married, *and living with concubines in 
contempt or evasion of their own rules. In character and 
conduct the laity were superior to the clergy. They had 
wives, and were therefore less profligate. They made no 
pretensions to mysterious power and responsibilities, and 
therefore they were not hypocrites. They were violent, 
they were vicious, yet they had the kind of belief in the 
truth of religion which bound the rope about young Henry's 
neck and dragged him from his bed to die upon the ashes, 
which sent them in tens of thousands to perish on the Syr- 
ian sands to recover the sepulchre of Christ from the infi- 
del. The life beyond the grave was as assured to them as 
the life uppn earth. In the sacraments and in the priest's 
absolution lay the one hope of escaping eternal destruction. 
And while they could feel no respect for the clergy as men, 
they feared their powers and reverenced their office. Both 
of laity and clergy the religion was a superstition, but in the 
laity the superstition was combined with reverence, and 
implied a real belief in the divine authority which it sym- 



Thomas Bechet. 15 

bolized. The clergy, the supposed depositaries of the su- 
pernatural qualities assigned to them, found it probably 
more difficult to believe in themselves, and the unreality re- 
venged itself upon their natures. 

Bearing in mind these qualities in the two orders, we 
proceed to the history of Becket. 



16 Life and Times of 



CHAPTER 11. 

Thomas Becket was born in London in the year 1118.* 
His father, Gilbert Becket, was a citizen in moderate cir- 
cumstances.^ His name denotes Saxon extraction. Few 
Normans as yet were to be found in the English towns con- 
descending to trade. Of his mother nothing authentic is 
known,^ except that she was a religious woman who brought 
up her children in the fear of God. Many anecdotes are 
related of his early years, but the atmosphere of legend in 
which his history was so early enveloped renders them all 
suspicious. His parents, at any rate, both died when he 
was still very young, leaving him, ill provided for, to the 
care of his father's friends. One of them, a man of wealth, 
Richard de I'Aigle, took charge of the tall, handsome, clever 
lad. He was sent to school at Merton Abbey, in Surrey, 
and afterwards to Oxford. In his vacations he was thrown 
among young men of rank and fortune, hunting and hawk- 
ing with them, cultivating his mind with the ease of con- 
scious ability, and doubtless not inattentive to the events 
which were going on around him. In his nursery he must 
have heard of the sinking of the White Ship in the Chan- 
nel with Henry the First's three children. Prince William, 
his brother Richard, and their sister. When he was seven 
years old, he may have listened to the jests of the citizens 

1 Or 1117. The exact date is uncertain. 

2 "Nee omniao infimi" are Becket's words as to the rank of his 
parents. 

3 The story that she was a Saracen is a late legend. Becket was after- 
wards taunted with thelowness of his birth. The absence of any allusion 
to a fact so curious if it was true, either in the taunt or in Becket's reply 
to it, may be taken as conclusive. 



Thomas Becket. 17 

at his flither's table over the misadventure in London of the 
cardinal legate, John of Crema. The legate had come to 
England to preside at a council and pass laws to part the 
clergy from their wives. While the council was going 
forward, his Eminence was himself detected in re meretricid^ 
to general astonishment and scandal. In the same year the 
Emperor Henry died. His widow, the English Matilda, 
came home, and was married again soon after to Geoffrey 
of Anjou. In 1134 the English barons swore fealty to her 
and her young son, afterwards King Henry the Second. 
The year following her father died. Her cousin, Stephen 
of Blois, broke his oath and seized the crown, and general 
distraction and civil war followed, while from beyond the 
seas the Levant ships, as they came up the river, brought 
news of bloody battles in Syria and slaughter of Christians 
and infidels. To live in stirring times is the best education 
of a youth of intellect. After spending three years in a 
house of business in the city, Becket contrived to recom- 
mend himself to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. The 
archbishop saw his talents, sent him to Paris, and thence to 
Bologna to study law, and employed him afterwards in the 
most confidential negotiations. The description by Nigellus 
of the generation of a bishop might have been copied line 
for line from Becket's history. The question of the day was 
the succession to the crown. Was Stephen's son, Eustace, 
the heir ? Or was Matilda's son, Henry of Anjou ? Theo- 
bald was for Henry, so far as he dared to show himself. 
Becket was sent secretly to Rome to move the pope. The 
struggle ended with a compromise. Stephen was to reign 
for his life. Henry was peaceably to follow him. The 
arrangement might have been cut again by the sword. But 
Eustace immediately afterwards died. In the same year 
Stephen followed him, and Henry the Second became king 
of England. With all these intricate negotiations the fut- 
ure martyr was intimately connected, and by his remarkable 
*alents especially recommended himself to the new king. 



18 Life and Times of 

No one called afterwards to an important position had better 
opportunities of acquainting himself with the spirit of the 
age, or the characters of the principal actors in it.^ If his 
services were valuable, his reward was magnificent. He 
was not a priest, but again precisely as Kigellus describes, 
he was loaded with lucrative church benefices. He was 
Provost of Beverley, he was Archdeacon of Canterbury, he 
was rector of an unknown number of parishes, and had stalls 
in several cathedrals. It is noticeable that afterwards, in 
the heat of the battle in which he earned his saintship, he 
was so far from looking back with regret on this accumula- 
tion of preferments that he paraded them as an evidence of 
his early consequence.^ A greater rise lay immediately 
before him. Henry the Second was twenty-two years old 
at his accession. At this time he was the most powerful 
prince in Western Europe. He was Duke of Normandy 
and Count of Anjou. His wife Eleanor, the divorced queen 
of Lewis of France, had brought with her Aquitaine and 
Poitou. The reigning pope, Adrian the Fourth, was an 
Englishman, and, to the grief and perplexity of later gene- 
rations of Irishmen, gave the new king permission to add 
the Island of the Saints to his already vast dominions. 
Over Scotland the English monarchs asserted a semi-feudal 
sovereignty, to which Stephen, at the battle of the Standard, 
had given a semblance of reality. Few English princes 

1 Very strange things were continually happening. In 1154 the Arch- 
bishop of York was poisoned in the Eucliarist by some of his clergy. 
*'Eodem anno Wilhelmus Eboracensis archiepiscopus, proditione clerico- 
rum suorum post perceptionem Eucharistiae infra ablutiones liquore lethali 
infectus, extinctus est." (Hoveden, vol. i. p. 213.) Beckct could not fail 
to have heard of this piece of villainy and to have made his own reflectiona 
upon it. 

2 Foliot, Bishop of London, told him that he owed his rise in life to the 
king. Becket replied : " Ad tempus quo me rex ministerio suo prasstitit, 
archidiaconatus Cantuarensis, praepositura Beverlaci, phirimje ecclesice, prae- 
bendse nonnulla?, alia etiam non pauca quae nominis mei erant possessio 
tunc temporis, adeo tenuem ut dicis, quantum ad ea qua; mundi sunt con- 
tradicunt me fuisse." 



Thomas Bechet. 19 

have commenced their career with fairer prospects than the 
second Henry. 

The state of England itself demanded his first attention. 
The usurpation of Stephen had left behind it a legacy of 
disorder. The authority of the Crown had been shaken. 
The barons, secure behind the walls of their castles, limited 
their obedience by their inclinations. The Church, an im- 
perium in imperio, however corrupt in practice, was aggres- 
sive as an institution, and was encroaching on the State 
with organized system. The principles asserted by Greg- 
ory the Seventh had been establishing themselves grad- 
ually for the past century, and in theory were no longer 
questioned. The power of the Crown, it was freely ad- 
mitted, was derived from God. As little was it to be 
doubted that the clergy were the ministers of God in a 
nearer and higher sense than a layman could pretend to be, 
holding as they did the power of the keys, and able to pun- 
ish disobedience by final exclusion from heaven. The prin- 
ciple was simple. The application only was intricate. The 
clergy, though divine as an order, were as frail in their in- 
dividual aspect as common mortals, as ambitious, as worldly, 
as licentious, as unprincipled, as violent, as wicked, as much 
needing the restraint of law and the policeman as their sce- 
ular brethren, perhaps needing it more. How was the 
law to be brought to bear on a class of persons who claimed 
to be superior to law ? King Henry's piety was above sus- 
picion, but he was at all points a sovereign, especially im- 
patient of anarchy. The conduct of too many ecclesiastics, 
regular and secular alike, was entirely intolerable, and a 
natural impatience was spreading through the country, with 
which the king perhaps showed early symptoms of sym- 
pathizing. Archbishop Theobald, at any rate, was uneasy 
at the part which he might take, and thought that he 
needed some one at his side to guide him in salutary courses. 
At Theobald's instance, in the second year of Henry's reign, 
Becket became Chancellor of England, being then thirty- 
seven years old. 



20 Life and Times of 

In his new dignity he seemed at first likely to disappoint 
the archbishop's expectations of him. Some of his biog- 
raphers, indeed, claim as his perpetual merit that he op- 
posed the hestias curice, or court wild beasts, as churchmen 
called the anticlerical party. John of Salisbury, en the 
other hand, describes him as a magnificent trifiei, a scoiiier 
of law and the clergy, and given to scurrilous jesting at 
laymen's parties.-^ At any rate, except in the arbitrariness 
of his character, he showed no features of the Becket of 
Catholic tradition. 

Omnipotent as Wolsey after him, he was no less magni- 
ficent in his outward bearing. His dress was gorgeois, his 
retinue of knights as splendid as the king's. His hospitaxl- 
ties were boundless. His expenditure was enormous. How 
the means for it were supplied is uncertain. The revenue 
was wholly in his hands. Tlie king was often on the conti- 
nent, and at such times the chancellor governed everything. 
He retained his Church benefices — the archdeaconry of 
Canterbury certainl3^ and probably the rest. Vast sums 
fell irregularly into Chancery from wardships and vacant 
sees and abbeys. All this Becket received, and never ac- 
counted for the whole of them. Whatever mi<rlit be the 
explanation, the wealthiest peer in England did not main- 
tain a more costly household, or appear in public with a 
more princely surrounding. 

Of his administration his adorinoj and admirini^ biofj- 
rapher, the monk Grim, who was present at his martyr- 
dom, draws a more than unfavorable picture, and even 
charges him with cruelty and ferocity. "The persons that 
he slew," says Grim, " the persons that he robbed of their 
property, no one can enumerate. Attended by a large com- 
pany of knights, he would assail whole communities, destroy 

1 "Dum magnificis erat nngator in curia, dam legis videbatur con- 
temptor et cleri, dum scurriles, cum potentioribus sectabatur ineptias, mag- 
nus habebatur, clarus erat et acceptus omnibus." — John of Salisbury to 
the Bishop of Exeter. Letters, 1166. 



Thomas Becket. 21 



cities and towns, villages^ and farms, and, without remorse 
or pity, would give them to devouring flames." ^ 

Such words give a new aspect to the demand afterwards 
made that he should answer for his proceedings as chancel- 
lor, and lend a new meaning to his unwillingness to reply. 
At this period the only virtue which Grim allows him to 
have preserved unsullied was his chastity. 

In foreign politics he was meanwhile as much engaged as 
ever. The anomalous relations of the king with Lewis the 
Seventh, whose vassal he was for his continental dominions, 
while he was his superior in power, were breaking continu- 
ally into quarrels, and sometimes into war. The anxiety of 
Henry, however, was always to keep the peace, if possible. 
In 1157 Becket was sent to Paris to negotiate an alliance 
between the Princess Margaret, Lewis's daughter, and 
Henry's eldest son. The prince was then seven years old. 
the little lady was three. Three years later they were 
actually married, two cardinals, Henry of Pisa and William 
of Pavia, coming as legates from the pope to be present on 
the august occasion. France and England had been at that 
time drawn together by a special danger which threatened 
Christendom. In 1159 Pope Adrian died. Alexander the 
Third was chosen to succeed him with the usual formalities, 
but the election was challenged by Frederic Barbarossa, 
who set up an antipope. The Catholic Church was split in 
two. Frederic invaded Italy, Alexander was driven out of 
Eome and took shelter in France at Sens. Henry and 
Lewis gave him their united support, and forgot their own 
quarrels in the common cause. Henry, it was universally 
admitted, was heartily in earnest for Pope Alexander. 
The pope, on his part, professed a willingness and an anx- 
iety to be of corresponding service to Henry. The knig 

1 "Quantis autem necem, quantis rerum omnium proscriptionem intu- 
lerit, quis enumeret ? Valida namque stipatus militum manii civitates ag- 
gressus est. Delevit urbes et oppida; villas et prgedia absque miserationis 
mtuitu voraci consumpsit incendio."— Materials for the History of Thomas 
Becketf vol. ii. pp. 364, 305. 



22 Life and Times of 

considered tlie moment a favorable one for taking in hand 
the reform of the clergy, not as against the Holy See, but 
with the Holy See in active cooperation with him. On this 
side he anticipated no difficulty if he could find a proper 
instrument at home, and that instrument he considered him- 
self to possess in his chancellor. Where the problem was 
to reconcile the rights of the clergy with the law of the 
land, it would be convenient, even essential, that the chan- 
cellorship and the primacy should be combined in the same 
person. Barbarossa was finding the value of such a combi- 
nation in Germany, where, with the Archbishop of Cologne 
for a chancellor of the Empire, he was carrying out an ec- 
clesiastical revolution. 

It is not conceivable that on a subject of such vast im- 
portance the king should have never taken the trouble to 
ascertain Becket's views. The condition of the clergy was 
a pressing and practical perplexity. Becket was his confi- 
dential minister, the one person whose advice he most 
sought in any difficulty, and on whose judgment he most re- 
lied. Becket, in all probability, must have led the king t& 
believe that he agreed with him. There can be no doubt 
whatever that he must have allowed the kins; to form his 
plans without having advised him against them, and without 
having cautioned him that from himself there was to be 
looked for nothing but opposition. The king, in fact, ex- 
pected no opposition. So far as he had known Becket 
hitherto, he had known him as a statesman and a man of 
the world. If Becket had ever in this capacity expressed 
views unfavorable to the king's intentions, he would not 
have failed to remind him of it in their subsequent contro- 
versy. That he was unable to appeal for such a purpose to 
the king's recollection must be taken as a proof that he 
never did express unfavorable views. If we are not to sup- 
pose that he was deliberately insincere, we may believe that 
he changed his opinion in consequence of the German 
Bchism. But even so an honorable man would have given 



Thomas BeclceU 23 

his master warning of tlie alteration, and it is certain tliat 
he did not. He did, we are told, feel some scruples. The 
ecclesiastical conscience had not wholly destroyed the hu- 
man conscience, and the king had been a generous master 
to him. But his difficulties were set aside by the casuistries 
of a Roman legate. Archbishop Tlieobald died when the 
two cardinals were in Normandy for the marriage of Prince 
Henry and the Princess Margaret. There was a year of 
delay before the choice was finally made. Becket asked 
the advice of Cardinal Henry of Pisa. Cardinal Henry 
told him that it was for the interest of the Church that he 
should accept the archbishopric, and that he need not com- 
municate convictions which would interfere with his ap- 
pointment. The}'' probably both felt that, if Becket de- 
clined, the king would find some other prelate who would 
be more pliant in his hands. Thus at last the decision was 
arrived at. The Empress Matilda warned her son against 
Becket's dangerous character, but the warning was in vain. 
The king pressed the archbishopric on Becket, and Becket 
accepted it. The Chief Justice Richard de Luci went over 
with three bishops to Canterbury in the spring of 1162 to 
gain the consent of the chapter ; the chapter yielded not 
without reluctance. The clergy of the province gave their 
acquiescence at a council held afterwards at Westminster, 
but with astonishment, misgiving, and secret complaints. 
Becket at this time was not even a priest, and was known 
only to the world as an unscrupulous and tyrannical minis- 
ter. The consent was given, however. The thing was 
done. On the 2d of June (1162) Becket received his 
priest's orders from the Bishop of Rochester. On the od 
he was consecrated in his own cathedral. 



24 Life and Times of 



CHAPTER III. 

Becket was now forty-four years old. The king waa 
thirty. The ascendency which Becket had hitherto exer- 
cised over his sovereign through the advantage of age was 
necessarily diminishing as the king came to maturity, and 
the two great antagonists, as they were henceforth to be, 
were more fairly matched than Becket perhaps expected to 
find them. The archbishop was past the time of life at 
which the character can be seriously changed. After forty 
men may alter their opinions, their policy, and their con- 
duct ; but they rarely alter their dispositions ; and Becket 
remained as violent, as overbearing, as ambitious, as un- 
scrupulous, as he had shown himself when chancellor, 
though the objects at which he was henceforth to aim were 
entirely diffei-ent. It would be well for his memory were 
it possible to credit him with a desire to reform the Church 
of which he was the head, to jDurge away the corruption of 
it, to punish himself the moral disorders of the clergy, while 
he denied the rig] t to punish them to the State. We seek 
in vain, however, for the slighest symptoms of any such 
desire. Throughout his letters there is not the faintest 
consciousness that anything was amiss. He had been him- 
self amongst the grossest of pluralists ; so far from being 
ashamed of it, he still aimed at retaining the most lucrative 
of his benefices. The idea with which his mind was filled 
was not the purity of the Church, but the privilege and 
supremacy of the Chrrch. As chancellor he had been at 
the head of the Stat* under the king. As archbishop, in 
the name of the Church, he intended to be head both of 
State and king ; to place the pope, and himself as the 



Thomas Beeket. .> 25 

pope's legate, in the position of God's vicegerents. When 
he found it written that " by me kings reign and princes 
decree judgment," he appropriated the language to himself, 
and his single aim was to convert the words thus construed 
into reality. 

The first public intimation which Beeket gave of his in- 
tentions was his resignation of the chancellorship. He had 
been made archbishop that the offices might be combined ; 
he was no sooner consecrated than he informed the king 
that the duties of his sacred calling left him no leisure for 
secular business. He did not even wait for Henry's return 
from Normandy. He placed the great seal in the hands of 
the chief justice, the young prince, and the barons of the 
Exchequer, demanding and receiving from them a hurried 
discharge of his responsibilities. The accounts, for all that 
appears, were never examined. Grim, perhaps, when ac- 
cusing him of rapine and murder, was referring to a sup- 
pression of a disturbance in Aquitaine, not to any special 
act of which he was guilty in England; but the unsparing 
ruthlessness which he displayed on that occasion was an 
indication of the disposition which was disjolayed in all that 
he did, and he was wise in anticipating inquiry. 

The king had not recovered from his surprise at such 
unwelcome news when he learned that his splendid min- 
ister had laid aside his magnificence and had assumed the 
habit of a monk, that he was always in tears — tears which 
flowed from him with such miraculous abundance as to evi- 
dence the working in him of some special grace,^ or else of 
some special purpose. His general conduct at Canterbury 
was equally startling. One act of charity, indeed, he had 
overlooked which neither in conscience nor prudence shoull 
have been forgotten. The mother of Pope Adrian the 
Fourth was living somewhere in his province in extreme 

1 " Ut putaretur possessor irrigui superioris et inferioris." The "supe- 
rior" fountain of tears was the love of God ; the "inferior " was the feai 
Hf hell. 



26 Life and Times of 

])Overty, starving, it was said, of cold and hunger. The see 
of Canterbury, as well as England, owed much to Pope 
Adrian, and Becket's neglect of a person who was at least 
entitled to honorable maintenance was not unobserved at 
Rome. Otherwise his generosity was profuse. Archbishop 
-Theobald had doubled the charities of his predecessor, 
Becket doubled Theobald's. Mendicants swarmed about 
the gates of the palace ; thirteen of them were taken in 
daily to have their dinners, to have their feet washed by 
the archiepiscopal hands, and to be dismissed each with a 
silver penny in his pocket. The tears and the benevolent 
humiliations were familiar in aspirants after high church 
offices ; but Becket had nothing more to gain. What 
could be the meaning of so sudden and so startling a trans- 
formation ? Was it penitence for his crimes as chancellor ? 
The tears looked like penitence ; but there were other 
symptoms of a more aggressive kind. He was no sooner 
in his seat than he demanded the restoration of estates that 
his predecessors had alienated. He gave judgment in his 
own court in his own favor, and enforced his own decrees. 
KniMits holdinc][ their lands from the Church on military 
tenure had hitherto done homage for them to the Crown. 
The new archbishop demanded the homage for himself. 
He required the Earl of Clare to swear fealty to him for 
Tunbridge Castle. The Earl of Clare refused and appealed 
to the king, and the archbishop dared not at once strike 
so large a quarry. But he showed his teeth witli a 
smaller offender. Sir Willliam Eynesford, one of the 
king's knights, was patron of a benefice in Kent. The 
archbishop presented a priest to it. The knight ejected 
the archbishop's nominee, and the archbishop excommuni- 
cated the knight. Such peremptory sentences, pronounced 
without notice, had a special inconvenience when directed 
against persons immediately about the king. Excommuni- 
cation was like the plague; whoever came near the infected 
body himself caught the contagion, and the king might be 



Thomas Bechet. 27 

poisoned without his knowledge. It had been usual in 
these cases to pay the king the courtesy of consulting him. 
Becket, least ef all men, could have pleaded ignorance of 
such a custom. It seemed that he did not choose to ob- 
serve it.-^ While courting the populace, and gaining a 
reputation as a saint among the clergy, the archbishop was 
asserting his secular authority, and using the spiritual 
sword to enforce it. Again, what did it mean, this inter- 
ference with the rights of the laity, this ambition for a 
personal following of armed knights ? Becket was not a 
dreamer who had emerged into high place from the cloister 
or the library. He was a man of the world intimately 
acquainted with the practical problems of the day, the most 
unlikely of all persons to have adopted a course so marked 
without some ulterior purpose. Henry discovered too late 
that his mother's eyes had been keener than his own. He 
returned to England in the beginning of 1163. Becket 
met him at his landing, but was coldly received. 

In the summer of the same year, Pope Alexander held a 
council at Tours. The English prelates attended. The 
question of precedence was not this time raised. The Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and his suffragans sat on the pope's 
right hand, the Archbishop of York and his suffragans sat 
on the pope's left. Whether anything of consequence 
passed on this occasion between the pope and Becket is not 
known : probably not ; it is certain, however, that they 
met. On the archbishop's return to England the disputes 
between the secular and spiritual authorities broke into 
open conflict. 

The Church principles of Gregory the Seventh were 

1 *' Quod, quia rege minime certiorate archiepiscopus fccisset, maxi- 
mam ejus indignationem incurrit. Asserit enim rex juxta dignitatem 
regni sui, quod nullus qui de rege teneat in capite vel minister ejus citra 
ipsius conscientiam sit excommunicandus ab aliquo, ne si hoc regem lateat 
lapsus ignorantia communicet excommunicato ; comitem vel baronem ad 
se vpuientom in osculo vel consilio admittat." — MattJiew Paris, Chronica 
Majtrva^ vol. ii. p. 222, 



28 Life and Times of 

making their way through Europe, but were making their 
way with extreme slowness. Though the ceUbacy of the 
clergy had been decreed by law, clerical concubinage was 
still the rule in England. A focaria and a family were 
still to be found in most country parsonages. In theory the 
priesthood was a caste. In practice priests and their flocks 
were united by common interests, common pursuits, com- 
mon virtues, and common crimes. The common law of 
England during the reigns of the Conqueror's sons had re- 
fused to distinguish between them. Clerks guilty of robbery 
or murder had been tried like other felons in the ordinary 
courts, and if found guilty had suffered the same punish- 
ments. The new^ pretension was that they were a peculiar 
order, set apart for God's service, not amenable to secular 
jurisdiction, and liable to trial only in the spiritual courts. 
Under the loose administration of Stephen the judges had 
begun to recognize their immunity, and the conduct of the 
lower class of clergy was in consequence growing daily 
more intolerable. Clergy, indeed, a great many of them 
had no title to be called. They had received only some 
minor form of orders, of which no sign was visible in their 
appearance or conduct. They were clerks only so far as 
they held benefices and claimed special privileges ; for the 
rest, they hunted, fought, drank, and gambled like other 
idle gentlemen. 

In the autumn of 1163 a specially gross case of clerical 
offence brought the question to a crisis. 

Philip de Broi, a young nobleman who held a canonry 
at Bedford, had killed some one in a quarrel. He was 
brought before the court of the Bishop of Lincoln, where 
he made his purgation ecclesiastico jure — that is to say, he 
paid the usual fees and perhaps a small fine. The relations 
of the dead man declared themselves satisfied, and Philip 
lie Broi was acquitted. The Church and the relations 
might be satisfied ; public justice was not satisfied. The 
?lieriff of Bedfordshire declined to recognize the decision, 



Thomas Bechet. 29 

and summoned the canon a second time. The canon in- 
sulted the sheriff in open court, and refused to plead before 
him. The sheriff referred the matter to the king. The 
king sent for Philip de Broi, and cross-questioned him in 
Becket's presence. It was not denied that he had killed a 
man. The king inquired what Becket was prepared to do. 
Becket's answer, for the present and all similar cases, was 
that a clerk in orders accused of felony must be tried in the 
first "instance in an ecclesiastical court, and punished accord- 
ing to ecclesiastical law. If the crime was found to be of 
peculiarly dark kind, the accused might be deprived of his 
orders, and, if he again offended, should lose his privilege. 
But for the offence for which he was deprived he was not 
to be again tried or again punished ; the deprivation itself 
was to suffice. 

The king, always moderate, was unwilling to press the 
question to extremity. He condemned the judgment of the 
Bishop of Lincoln's court. He insisted that the murderer 
should have a real trial. But he appointed a mixed com- 
mission of bishops and laymen to try him, the bishops hav- 
ing the preponderating voice. 

Philip de Broi pleaded that he had made his purgation 
in the regular manner, that he had made his peace with the 
family of the man that he had killed, and that the matter 
was thus ended. He apologized for having insulted the 
sheriff, and professed himself willing to make reasonable 
reparation. The sentence of the commission was that his 
benefices should be sequestered for two years, and that, if 
the sheriff insisted upon it, he should be flogged. 

So weak a judgment showed Henry the real value of 
Becket's theory. The criminal clerk was to be amenable 
to the law as soon as he has been degraded, not before ; and 
it was perfectly plain, that clerks never would be degraded. 
They might commit murder upon murder, robbery upon 
robbery, and the law would be unable to touch them. It 
could not be. The king insisted that a sacred profession 



80 Life and Times of 

should not be used as a screen for the protection of felony. 
He summoned the whole body of the bishops to meet him 
in a council at "Westminster in October. 

The council met. The archbishop was resolute. He 
replied for the other bishops in an absolute refusal to make 
any concession. The judges and the laity generally were 
growing excited. Had the clergy been saints, the claims 
advanced for them would have been scarcely tolerable. 
Being what they were, such pretensions were ridiculous. 
Becket might speak in their name. He did not speak their 
real opinions. Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux, came over to use 
his influence with Becket, but he found him inexorable. To 
risk the peace of the Church in so indefensible a quarrel 
seemed obstinate folly. The Bishop of Lisieux and several 
of the English prelates wrote privately to the pope to en- 
treat him to interfere. 

Alexander had no liking for Becket. He had known 
him long, and had no belief in the lately assumed airs of 
sanctity. Threatened as he was by the emperor and the 
antipope, he had no disposition to quarrel with Henry, nor 
in the particular question at issue does he seem to have 
thought the archbishop in the right. On the spot he dis- 
patched a legate, a monk named Philip of Aumone, to tell 
Becket that he must obey the laws of the realm, and submit 
to the king's pleasure. 

The king was at Woodstock. The archbishop, thus com- 
manded, could not refuse to obey. He repaired to the 
court. He gave his promise. He undertook, bond fide et 
sine malo ingenio^ to submit to the laws of the land, what- 
ever they might be found to be. But a vague engagement 
of this kind was unsatisfactory, and might afterwards be 
evaded. The question of the immunities of the clergy had 
been publicly raised. The attention of the nation had been 
called to it. Once for all the position in which the clergy 
were to stand to the law of the land must be clearly and 
finally laid down. The judges had been directed to inquire 



Tliomas Becket. 31 

into the customs which had been of use in England under 
the king's grandfather, Henry the First. A second council 
was called to meet at Clarendon, near Winchester, in the 
following January, when these customs, reduced to writing, 
would be placed in the archbishops' and bishops' hands, and 
they would be required to consent to them in detail. 

The sj^iritual power had encroached on many sides. 
Every question, either of person, conduct, or property, in 
which an ecclesiastic was a party, the Church courts had 
endeavored to reserve for themselves. Being judges in 
their own causes, the decisions of the clergy were more sat- 
isfactory to themselves than to the laity. The practice of 
appealing to Rome in every cause in which a churchman 
was in any way connected had disorganized the whole course 
of justice. The Constitutions (as they were called) of Clar- 
endon touched in detail on a variety of points on which the 
laity considered themselves injured. The general provi- 
sions embodied in these famous resolutions would now be 
scarcely challenged in the most Catholic country in the 
world. 

1. During the vacancy of any archbishoi^ric, bishopric, 
abbey, or priory of royal foundation, the estates were to be 
in the custody of the Crown. Elections to these prefer- 
ments were to be held in the royal chapel, with the assent 
of the king and council. 

2. In every suit to which a clerk was a party, proceed- 
ings were to commence before the king's justices, and these 
justices were to decide whether the case was to be tried be- 
fore a spiritual or a civil court. If it was referred to a spir- 
itual court, a civil officer was to attend to watch the trial, 
and if a clerk was found guilty of felony the Church was to 
cease to protect him. 

3. No tenant-in-chief of the king, or officer of his house- 
hold, was to be excommunicated, or his lands laid under an 
interdict, until application had been first made to the king, 
or, in his absence, to the chief justice. 



32 Life and Times of 

4. Laymen were not to be indicted in a bishop's court, 
either for perjury or other similar offence, except in the 
bishop's presence by a lawful prosecutor and with lawful 
witnesses. If the accused was of so high rank that no 
prosecutor would appear, the bishop might require the 
sheriff to call a jury to inquire into the case. 

5. Archbishops, bishops, and other great persons were 
forbidden to leave the realm without the king's permission. 

6. Appeals were to be from the archdeacon to the bishop, 
from the bishop to the archbishop, from the archbishop to 
the king, and no further; that, by the king's mandate, the 
case might be ended in the archbishop's court. -^ 

The last article the king afterwards explained away. It 
was one of the most essential, but he was unable to main- 
tain it ; and he was rash, or he was ill-advised, in raising a 
second question, on which the pope would naturally be sen- 
sitive, before he had disposed of the first. On the original 
subject of dispute, whether benefit of clergy was to mean 
impunity to crime, the pope had already practically decided, 
and he could have been brought without difficulty to give a 
satisfactory judgment upon it. Some limit also might have 
been assigned to the powers of excommunication which 
could be so easily abused, and which, if abused, might lose 
their terrors. But appeals to the pope were the most lucra- 
tive source of the pojje's revenue. To restrict appeals was 
to touch at once his pride and his exchequer. 

The Constitutions were drafted, and when the council 
assembled were submitted to Becket for approval. He 
saw in the article on the appeals a prospect of recovering 
Alexander's support, and he again became obstinate. None 
of the bishops, however, would stand by him. There was a 
general entreaty that he would not reopen the quarrel, and 
he yielded so far as to give a general promise of conform- 

1 The Constitutions were seventeen in all. The articles in the text are 
an epitome of those which the Church found most objectionable. 



TJiomas Becket. 33 

ity.'^ It was a promise given dishonestly — given with a con- 
scious intention of not observing it. He had been tempted, 
he afterwards said, by an intimation that, if he would but 
seem to yield, the king would be satisfied. Becket was a 
lawyer. He could not really have been under any such 
illusion. In real truth he did not mean to be bound by the 
language of the Constitutions at all, but only by his own 
language, from which it would be easy to escape. The 
king by this time knew the man with whom he had to deal. 
The Constitutions were placed in writing before the bishops, 
who one and all were required to signify their adherence 
under their several hands and seals. 

Becket, we are innocently told by his biographer Grim, 
now saw that he was to be entrapped. There was no en- 
trapping if his promise had been honestly given. The use 
of the word is a frank confession that he had meant to 
deceive Henry by words, and that he was being caught in 
his own snare. When driven to bay, the archbishop's fiery 
nature always broke into violence. "Never, never," he 
said; " I will never do it so long as breath is in my body." ^ 
In affected penitence for his guilty compliance, he retired to 
his see to afflict his flesh with public austerities. He sus- 
pended himself ab altaris officio (from the service of the 
altar) till the pope should absolve him from his sin. The 
Bishop of Evreux, who was present at Clarendon, advised 
him to write to the pope for authority to sign. He pre- 
tended to comply, but he commissioned a private friend of 

1 Foliot, however, says that many of the bishops were willing to stand 
out, and that Becket himself advised a false submission (Foliot to Becket, 
Giles, vol. i. p. 381.) 

2 Sanctus archiepiscopus tunc primum dolum quem fuerat suspicatus ad- 
vertens, interposita fide quam Deo debuit ; " Non hoc fiet," respondit, 
" quam diu in hoc vasculo spirat hpec anima." Nam domestici regis secu- 
rum fecerant archiepiscopum quod nunquam scriberentur leges, nunquam 
illarum fieret recordatio, si regem verbo tantum in audientia procerum 
honorasset. Ficta se conjnratione seductum videns, ad animam usque 
iristabatur." — Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, vol. ii. p. 
382. 

3 



34 lAfe and Times of 

his own, John of Salisbury, who was on the continent, to 
prepare for his reception on the flight which he already 
meditated from England, and by all methods, fair and foul, 
to prevent the pope and cardinals from giving the king any 
further encouragement. The Bishop of Lisieux, on the 
other hand, whose previous intercession had decided the 
pope in the king's favor, went to Sens in person to persuade 
Alexander to cut the knot by sending legatine powers to 
the Archbishop of York, to override Becket's obstinacy 
and to consent in the name of the Church instead of him. 

John of Salisbury's account of his proceedings gives a 
curious picture of the cause of God, as Becket called it, on 
its earthly and grosser side. 

The Count of Flanders (he wrote to the archbishop) is most 
anxious to help you. If extremity comes, send the count word, 
and he will provide ships. ^ Everything which passed in Lon- 
don and at Winchester (Clarendon) is better known here than 
in England itself. I have seen the King of France, who un- 
dertakes to write to the pope in your behalf. The feeling to- 
wards our king among the French people is of fear and hatred. 
The pope himself I have avoided so far. I have written to the 
two cardinals of Pisa and Pavia to explain the injury which 
will ensue to the Court of Rome if the Constitutions are up- 
held. I am not sanguine, however. " Many things make 
against us, few in our favor. Great men will come over here 
with money to spend, quam nunquam Roma confempsit (which 
Rome never despised). The pope himself has always been 
against us in this cause, and throws in our teeth that after all 
which Pope Adrian did for the see of Canterbury you are al- 
lowing his mother to starve in cold and hunger." ^ You write 
that if I cannot succeed otherwise I may promise two hundred 
marks. The other side will give down three or four hundred 
sooner than be defeated,^ and I will answer for the Romans that 

1 "Naves enim procurabit si hoc necessitas vestra exegerit, et ipse ante, 
ut oportet, p»aemoneatnr." — Joannis Sarisbiriensis Epistolw, vol. i. p. 188. 

2 *' Cujus mater apud vos algore torquetur et inedia." 

8 " Sed scribitis, si alia via non patuerit, promittainus ducentas marcas 
At certe pars adversa antequam frustretiu' trecentas dabit aut quadriugeu- 
tas." 



Thomas Becket. 35 

they will prefer the larger sum in hand from the king to the 
smaller in promise from you. It is true we are contending for 
the liberties of the Church, but your motive, it will be said, is 
not the Church's welfare, but your own ambition. They will 
propose (I have already heard a whisper of it) that the pope 
shall cross to England in person to crown the young king and 
take your place at Canterbury for a while. If the Bishop of 
Lisieux sees the pope, he will do mischief. I know the nature 
of him.^ 

Though the archbishop was convulsing the realm for the 
sacred right of appeals to Rome, it is plain from this letter 
that he was aware of the motives by which the papal deci- 
sions were governed, and that he was perfectly ready to 
address himself to them. Unfortunately his resources 
were limited, and John of Salisbury's misgivings were con- 
firmed. The extraordinary legatine powers were conceded 
not to the Archbishop of York — it was held inexpedient to 
set York above Canterbury — but to the king himself. To 
Becket the pope wrote with some irony on hearing that he 
had suspended himself. He trusted the archbishop was not 
creating needless scandal. The promise to the king had 
been given with good intentions, and could not therefore 
be a serious sin. If there was anything further on his con- 
science (did the pope suspect that the promise had been dis- 
honest?), he might confess it to any discreet priest. He 
(the pope) meanwhile absolved him, and advised, and even 
enjoined, him to return to his duties. 

The first campaign was thus over, and the king was so 
far victorious. The legatine powers having arrived, the 
Constitutions were immediately acted upon. The number 
of criminals among the clergy happened to be unusually 
large.^ They were degraded, sent to trial, and suffered in 
the usual way by death or mutilation. "Then," say Beck- 

1 John of Salisbury to Becket (abridged). Letters, vol. i. p. 187. 

2 " Sed et ordinatorum inordinati mores inter regem et archiepiscopum 
auxere malitiam, qui solito abundantius per idem tempus apparebant, pub- 
"cis irretiti criminibus." — MateAah, etc., vol. ii. p. 385. 



36 Life and Times of 

et's despairJDg biographers, " was seen the mournful spec- 
tacle of priests and deacons who had committed murder, 
manslaughter, theft, robbery, and other crimes, carried in 
carts before the king's commissioners, and punished as if 
they had been ordinary men." The archbishop clamored, 
threatened, and, as far as his power went, interfered. The 
king was firm. He had sworn at his coronation, he said, to 
do justice in the realm, and there were no greater villains 
in it than many of the clergy.^ That bishops should take 
public offenders out of custody, absolve them, and let them 
go, was not to be borne. It was against law, against usage, 
against reason. It could not be. The laity were gener- 
ally of the king's opinion. Of the bishops some four or five 
agreed privately with Becket, but dared not avow their 
opinions. The archbishop perceived that the game was 
lost unless he could himself see the pope and speak to him. 
He attempted to steal over from Sandwich, but the boatmen 
recognized him midway across the channel and brought him 
back. 

1 " In omni scelere et flagitio nequiores." 



Thomas Becket. 37 



CHAPTER IV. 

The pope had sent legatine powers to the king, and the 
king had acted upon them ; but something was still wanting 
for general satisfaction. He had been required to confirm 
the Constitutions by a bull. He had hesitated to do it, and 
put off his answer. At length he sent the Archbishop of 
Rouen to England to endeavor to compromise matters. 
The formal consent of the Church was still wanting, and in 
the absence of it persons who agreed with the king in prin- 
ciple were uneasy at the possible consequences. The clergy 
might be wicked, but they were magicians notwithstanding, 
and only the chief magician could make it safe to deal with 
them. In the autumn of 1164 the king once more sum- 
moned a great council to meet him at Northampton Castle. 
The attendance was vast. Every peer and prelate not dis- 
abled was present, all feeling the greatness of the occasion. 
Castle, town, and monasteries were thronged to overflowing. 
Becket only had hesitated to appear. His attempt to es- 
cape to the continent was constructive treason. It was 
more than treason. It was a violation of a distinct promise 
which he had given to the king.-^ The storm which he had 
raised had unloosed the tongues of those who had to com- 
plain of his ill-usage of them either in his archbishop's 
court or in the days when he was chancellor. The accounts 
had been looked into, and vast sums were found to have 
been received by him of which no explanation had been 
given. Who was this man, that he should throw the coun- 
try into confusion, in the teeth of the bishops, in the teeth 
(as it seemed) of the pope, in the teeth of his own oath 
1 Foliot to Becket, Giles, vol. ii. p. 387. 



38 Life and Times of 

given solemnly to the king at Woodstock ? The Bishop of 
London, in a letter to Becket, charged him with having 
directly intended to commit perjury.-^ The first object of 
the Northampton council was to inquire into his conduct, 
and he had good reason to be alarmed at the probable con- 
sequences. He dared not, however, disobey a peremptory 
summons. He came, attended by a large force of armed 
knights, and was entertained at the monastery of St. An- 
drews. To anticipate inquiry into his attempted flight, he 
applied for permission on the day of his arrival to go to 
France to visit the pope. The king told him that he could 
not leave the realm until he had answered for a decree which 
had been given in his court. The case was referred to the 
assembled peei's, and he was condemned and fined. It was 
a bad augury for him. Other charges lay thick, ready to 
be produced. He was informed officially that he would be 
required to explain the Chancery accounts, and answer for 
the money which he had applied to his own purposes. His 
proud temper was chafed to the quick, and he turned sick 
with anger.^ His admirers see only in these demands the 
sinister action of a dishonest tyranny. Oblique accusations, 
it is said, were raised against him, either to make him bend 
or to destroy his character. The question is rather whether 
his conduct admitted of explanation. If he had been un- 
just as a judge, if he had been unscrupulous as a high offi- 
cer of state, such faults had no unimportant bearing on his 
present attitude. He would have done wisely to clear him- 
self if he could ; it is probable that he could not. He re- 
fused to answer, and he sheltered himself behind the release 
which he had received at his election. His refusal was not 
allowed ; a second summons the next day found him in his 

1 Foliot says that at Clarendon Becket said to the bishops, " It is the 
Lord's will I should perjure myself. For the present I submit and incur 
perjury, to repent of it, however, as I best may." — Giles, vol. i. p. 381. 
Foliot was reminding Becket of what passed on that occasion. 

2 "Propter iram et indignationem quam in animo conceperat decidit in 
gravem a^gritudinem." — Hoveden, vol. i. p. 225. 



Thomas Becket, 39 

bed, which he said that he was too ill to leave. This was 
on a Saturday. A respite was allowed him until the fol- 
lowing Monday. On Monday the answer was the same. 
Messenger after messenger brought back word that the 
archbishop was unable to move. The excuse might be true 
— perhaps partially it was true. The king sent two great 
peers to ascertain, and in his choice of persons he gave a 
conclusive answer to the accusation of desirinff to deal un- 
fairly with Becket; one was Reginald, Earl of Cornwall, 
the king's uncle, who as long as Becket lived was the best 
friend that he had at the court ; the other was the remark- 
able Robert, Earl of Leicester, named Bossu (the Hunch- 
back). This Robert was a monk of Leicester Abbey, 
though he had a dispensation to remain at the court, and so 
bitter a papist was he that when the schismatic Archbishop 
of Cologne came afterwards to London he publicly insulted 
him and tore down the altar at which he had said mass. 
Such envoys would not have been selected with a sinister 
purpose. They found that the archbishop could attend if 
he wished, and they warned him of the danger of trying the 
king too far. He pleaded for one more day. On the Tues- 
day morning he undertook to be present. 

His knights, whose first allegiance was to the Crown, had 
withdrawn from the monastery, not daring or not choosing 
to stand by a jn-elate who appeared to be defying his sover- 
eign. Their place had been taken by a swarm of mendi- 
cants, such as the archbishop had gathered about him at 
Canterbury. He prepared for the scene in which he was 
to play a part with the art of which he was so accomplished 
a master. He professed to expect to be killed. He rose 
early. Some of the bishops came to see and remonstrate 
with him : they could not move his resolution, and they re- 
tired. Left to himself, he said the mass of St. Stephen in 
which were the words : " The kings of the earth stood up, 
and the rulers took counsel together against the Lord and 
against his anointed." He then put on a black stole and 



40 Life and Times of 

cap, mounted his palfrey, and, followed by a few monks and 
surrounded by his guard of beggars, rode a foot's pace to 
the castle preceded by his cross-bearer. 

The royal castle of Northampton was a feudal palace of 
the usual form. A massive gateway led into a quadrangle ; 
across the quadrangle was the entrance of the great hall, 
and at the upper end of the hall doors opened into spacious 
chambers beyond. The archbishop alighted at the gate, 
himself took his cross in his right hand, and, followed by a 
small train, passed through the quadrangle, and passed up the 
hall, " looking like the lion-man of the prophet's vision." ^ 
The king and the barons were in one chamber, the bishops 
in another. The archbishop was going in this attitude into 
the king's presence, that the court might see the person on 
whom they dared to sit in judgment ; but certain " Temp- 
lars " warned him to beware. He entered among his breth- 
ren, and moved through them to a chair at the upper end of 
the room. 

He still held his cross. The action was unusual ; the 
cross was the spiritual sword, and to bear it thus conspica- 
ously in a deliberative assembly was as if a baron had 
entered the council in arms. The mass of St. Stephen had 
been heai'd of, and in the peculiar temper of men's minds 
was regarded as a magical incantation.^ The Bishop of 
Hereford advanced and offered to carry the crofcb for him. 
Foliot, Bishop of London {filiiis hujus scecidi, " a son of 
this world ") said that if he came thus armed into the court 
the king would draw a sharper sword, and he would see 
then what his arms wonld avail him. Seeing him still ob- 
stinate, Foliot tried to force the cross out of his hands. 
The Archbishop of York added his persuasions ; but the 
Archbishop of York peculiarly irritated Becket, and was 

1 "Assumens faciem hominis, faciem leonis, propheticis illis animali- 
bus a proiiheta descriptis similliinus." — Herbert of Bosham. 

2 If was said to have been-done per artem magicam et in contemptu 
regis. (Hoveden.) He had the eiicharist concealed under his dress. 



Thomas Becket. 41 

silenced by a violent answer. " Fool thou hast ever been," 
said the Bishop of London, " and from thy folly I see plainly 
thou wilt not depart." Cries burst out on all sides. 
" Fly ! " some one whispered in the archbishop's ear ; " fly 
or you are a dead man." The Bishop of Exeter came in 
at the moment, and exclaimed that unless the archbishop 
gave way they would all be murdered. Becket never 
showed to more advantage than in moments of personal 
danger. To the Bishop of Exeter he gave a sharp answer, 
telling him that he savored not the things of God. But he 
collected himself. He saw that he was alone. He stood 
up, he appealed to the pope, charged the bishops on peril of 
their souls to excommunicate any one who dared to lay 
hands on him, and moved as if he intended to withdraw. 
The Bishop of Winchester bade him resign the archbishop- 
ric. With an elaborate oath (cum interminahili juratione) 
he swore that he would not resign. The Bishop of Chi- 
chester then said : " As our primate we are bound to obey 
you, but you are our primate no longer ; you have broken 
your oath. You swore allegiance to the king, and you 
subvert the common law of the realm. We too appeal to 
the pope. To his presence we summon you." "I hear 
what you say," was all the answer which Becket deigned to 
return. 

The doors from the adjoining chamber were now flung 
open. The old Earl of Cornwall, the hunchback Leicester, 
and a number of barons entered. " My lord," said the Earl 
of Leicester to the archbishop, "the king requires you to 
come to his presence and answer to certain things which will 
then be alleged against you, as you promised yesterday to 
do." " My lord earl," said Becket, " thou knowest how 
long and loyally I served the king in his worldly aflTairs. 
For that cause it pleased him to promote me to the office 
which now I hold. I did not desire the office ; I knew my 
infirmities. When I consented it was for the sake of the 
king alone. When I was elected I was formally acquitted 



42 Life and Times of 

of my responsibilities for all that I had done as chancellor. 
Therefore I am not bound to answer, and I will not an- 
swer." 

The earls carried back the reply. The peers by a swift 
vote declared that the archbishop must be arrested and 
placed under guard. 

The earls reentered, and Leicester approached him and 
began slowly and reluctantly to announce the sentence. 
" Nay," said Becket, lifting his tall meagre figure to its haugh- 
tiest height, " do thou first listen to me. The child may not 
judge his father. The king may not judge me, nor may you 
judge me. I will be judged under God by the pope alone, 
to whom in your presence I appeal. I forbid you under 
anathema to pronounce your sentence. And you, my breth- 
ren," he said, turning to the bishops, "since you will obey 
man rather than God, I call you too before the same judg- 
ment-seat. Under the protection of the Apostolic See, I 
depart hence." 

No hand was raised to stop him. He swept through the 
chamber and flung open the door of the hall. He stumbled 
on the threshold, and had almost fallen, but recovered him- 
self. The October evening was growing into twilight. The 
hall was thronged with the retinues of the king and the 
barons. Dinner was over. The floor was littered with 
rushes and fragments of rolls and broken meat. Draughts 
of ale had not been wanting, and young knights, pages, and 
retainers were either lounging on the benches or talking 
in eager and excited groups. As Becket appeared among 
them, fierce voices were heard crying, " Traitor ! traitor ! 
Stop the traitor ! " Among the loudest were Count Hame- 
lin, the king's illegimate brother, and Sir Ranulf de Broc, 
one of the Canterbury knights. Like a bold animal at bay, 
Becket turned sharply on these two. He called Count Ha- 
melin a bastard boy. He reminded De Broc of some near 
kinsman of his who had been hanged. The cries rose into 
a roar ; sticks and knots of straw were flung at him. An- 



Thomas Becket. 43 

other rash word, and he might have been torn in pieces. 
Some high official hearing the noise came in and conducted 
him safely to the door. 

In the quadrangle he found his servants waiting with his 
palfrey. The great gate was locked, but the key was hang- 
ing on the wall ; one of them took it and opened the gate, 
the porters looking on, but not interfering. Once outside 
he was received with a cheer of delight from the crowd, and 
with a mob of people about him he made his way back to 
the monastery. The king had not intended to arrest him, 
but he-<;ould not know it, and he was undoubtedly in danger 
from one or other of the angry men with whom the town 
was crowded. He prepared for immediate flight. A bed 
was made for him in the chapel behind the altar. After a 
hasty supper with a party of beggars whom he had intro- 
duced into the house, he lay down for a few hours of rest. 
At two in the morning, in a storm of wind and rain, he stole 
away disguised with two of the brethren. He reached Lin- 
coln soon after daybreak, and from Lincoln, going by cross 
paths, and slipping from hiding-place to hiding-place, he 
made his way in a fortnight to a farm of his own at Eastry, 
near Sandwich. He was not pursued. It was no sooner 
known that he was gone from Northampton than a procla- 
mation was sent through the country forbidding every man 
under pain of death to meddle with him. The king had 
determined to allow the appeal, and once more to place the 
whole question in the pope's hands. The Earl of Arundel 
with a dozen peers and bishops was dispatched at once to 
Sens to explain what had happened, and to request Alex- 
ander to send legates to England to investigate the quarrel 
and to end it. The archbishop, could he have consented to 
be quiet, might have remained unmolested at Canterbury 
till the result could be ascertained. But he knew too well 
the forces which would be at work in the papal court to 
wait for its verdict. His confidence was only in himself. 
Could he see the pope in person, he thought that he could 



44 Life and Times of 

influence him. He was sure of the friendship of Lewis of 
France, who was meditating a fresh quarrel with Henry, and 
would welcome his support. His own spiritual weapons 
would be as effective across the Channel as if used in Eng- 
land, while he would himself be in personal security. One 
dark night he went down with his two companions into 
Sandwich, and in an open boat crossed safely to Grave- 
lines. At St. Omer he fell in with his old friend Chief 
Justice de Luci, who was returning from a mission to the 
court of France. De Luci urged him to return to England 
and wait for the pope's decision, warning him of the con- 
sequences of persisting in a course which was really treason- 
able, and undertaking that the king would forgive him if he 
would go back at once. Entreaties and warnings were alike 
thrown away. He remained and dispatched a letter to the 
pope saying briefly that he had followed the example of his 
holiness in resisting the encroachments of princes, and had 
fled from his country. He had been called to answer before 
the king as if he had been a mere layman. The bishops, 
who ought to have stood by him, had behaved like cow- 
ards. If he was not sustained by his holiness, the Church 
would be ruined, and he would himself be doubly con- 
founded. 



Thomas BecJcet, 46 



CHAPTER V. 

The king and the English bishops looked with reason- 
able confidence to the result of their appeal. Becket had 
broken his promise to accept the Constitutions, and had so 
broken it as to show that the promise had been given in 
conscious bad faith. He was a defaulting public officer. 
He had been unjust as a judge. He had defied the Crown 
and the estates of the realm. He had refused to answer for 
his conduct, and had denied his responsibilities. He had 
deserted his post, and had fled from the realm, although the 
king's proclamation had left him without the excuse that he 
was in fear of personal violence. He was an archbishop, 
and possessed, in virtue of his office, of mysterious powers 
which the laity had not learned to defy. But the pope was 
superior to him in his own sphere, and on the pope the king 
naturally felt that he had a right to rely. The Earl of 
Arundel with the other peers, the Archbishop of York, and 
the Bishops of London, Chichester, and Exeter, were 
chosen as envoys, and were dispatched immediately on the 
dissolution of the Northampton meeting. They crossed 
the Channel on the same night that Becket crossed, and 
after a hasty and unsatisfactory interview with Lewis at 
Compiegne they made their way to Sens. Becket ought to 
have met them there. But Becket preferred to feel his 
ground and make friends in France before presenting him- 
self. He was disappointed in the Count of Flanders, who 
declined to countenance him. He escaped in disguise over 
the French frontier, and addressed himself to Lewis at Sois- 
sons. Lewis, who meant no good to Henry, received him 
warmly, and wrote in his favor to the pope. At the French 



46 Life and Times of 

court he remained till he saw how matters would go at 
Sens, sending forward his confidential friend, Herbert of 
Bosham, to watch the proceedings, and speak for him to the 
pope and cardinals. 

He might have easily been present himself, since Herbert 
reached Sens only a day after the arrival of the English 
ambassadors. The bishops stated their case. They laid the 
blame of the quarrel on the archbishop's violence. They 
explained the moderation of the king's demands. They 
requested the pope's interposition. The Earl of Arundel 
followed in the name of the English barons. He dwelt on 
the fidelity with which the king had adhered to the Holy 
See in its troubles, and the regret with which, if justice was 
denied them, the English nation might be compelled to 
look elsewhere. He requested, and the bishops requested, 
that Becket should be ordered to return to Canterbury, and 
that a legate or legates should be sent with plenary powers 
to hear the cause and decide upon it. 

Seeing that the question immediately before the pope did 
not, turn on the Constitutions, but on the liability of the 
archbishop to answer for his civil administration, the king 
was making a large concession. Many cardinals had their 
own good reasons for being on the the king's side, and, if left 
to himself, the pope would have been glad to oblige a valu- 
able friend. But to favor Henry was to offend Lewis under 
whose shelter he had taken refuge. The French bishops 
were many of them as violent as Becket himself The 
French people were on the same side from natural enmity 
to England, and Pope Alexander was in the same difficulty 
in which Pope Clement found himself three (centuries later 
between Henry the Eighth and Charles the Fifth. He said 
that he could form no resolution till he had heard what 
Becket had to say. He suggested that the English envoys 
should wait for Becket' s arrival ; but it was uncertain 
when Becket might arrive ; his French friends were gather- 
ing in their rear, and might intercept their return. A pro- 



Thomas Becket. 47 

kracted stay was impossible, and they again pressed for a 
legate. Alexander agreed to send some one, but without 
the ample powers which the envoys desired. He reserved 
the final decision for himself. 

The influences by which the papal court was determined 
were already too grossly notorious. A decision given in 
France would be the decision which would please the King 
of France. The envoys went home, taking with them a 
complimentary nuncio from the pope, and they had some dif- 
ficulty in escaping an attempt to waylay and capture them. 

They had no sooner gone than Becket appeared at Sens. 
He was received with no great warmth by the pope, and 
still more coldly by the cardinals " whose nostrils the scent 
of lucre had infected."^ French pressure, however, soon 
produced its effect. He had come magnificently attended 
from Soissons. His cause was openly espoused by the 
French nation. At his second interview, on his knees at 
Alexander's feet he represented that he was the victim of 
his devotion to the Holy See and the Catholic faith. He 
had only to yield on the Constitutions to be restored at 
once to favor and power. The Constitutions were read 
over, and he asked how it was possible for him to acknowl- 
edge laws which reduced the clergy into common mortals, 
and restricted appeals to the last depositary of justice on 
earth. 

Herbert of Bosham states that the pope and cardinals 
had never yet seen the Constitutions, but had only heard of 
them. This is simply incredible, and, like many other 
stories of this interesting but interested writer, is confuted 
by the facts of the case. John of Salisbury had said that 
the proceedings at Clarendon were better known on the con- 
tinent than in England. They had been watched in France 
for almost a year with the closest attention. Bishops and 
abbots had gone to and fro between the pope and the Eng- 
lish court with no other object than to find some terms ol 
1 " Quorum nares odor lucri infecerat." 



48 Life and Times of 

compromise. It is not conceivable that after sending an 
order to Becket to submit, after Becket had first consented, 
had then suspended himself for the sin of acquiesence, and 
had been absolved by Alexander himself, the Holy Father 
should never have acquainted himself with the particulars 
of the controversy. It is no less incredible, therefore, that, 
after hearing the Constitutions read, the pope should have 
severely blamed Becket, as Herbert also says that he did, 
for having ever consented at all. Be this as it may, the 
Constitutions found no favor. Parts of them vrere found 
tolerable, but parts intolerable, especially the restriction of 
the appeals. Again the pope took time for reflection. 
English money had secured a powerful faction among his 
advisers, and they were not ungrateful. Henry, they said, 
would no doubt modify the objectionable articles; and it 
was unsafe to alienate him at so dangerous a time. In pri- 
vate they sharply blamed Becket for having raised so inop- 
portune a storm ; and but for his own adroitness the arch- 
bishop would have been defeated after all. Once more he 
sought the pope's presence. He confessed his sins, and he 
tempted Alexander with the hope of rescuing the nomina- 
tion to the see of Canterbury from secular interference. 
He had been intruded into Christ's sheepfold, he said, by the 
secular power ; ^ and from this source all his subsequent 
troubles had arisen. The bishops at Northampton had bade 
him resign. He could not resign at their bidding, but he 
threw himself and his office on his holiness's mercy. He 
had accepted the archbishopric uncanonically. He now re- 
linquished it, to be restored or not restored as the pope 
might please. 

It was a bold stroke, and it nearly failed. Many cardi- 

1 " Ascendi in ovile Christi, sed non per ipsum ostium: velut quern non 
canonica vocavit electio, sed terror publicae potestatisintrusit." — Materials 
for the History of Thomas a. Becket, vol. ii. p. 243. But all these accounts 
of conversations must be received with caution. The accounts vary irrec- 
oncilably; and the enthusiasm of the biographers for their master and his 
cause infects every line of their narrative. 



Thomas Becket, 49 

nals saw in the offer a road out of the difficulty. Terms 
could now be arranged with Henry, and Becket could be 
provided for elsewhere. For some hours or days his friends 
thouoht his cause was lost. But the balance wavered at 
last so far in his favor that the sacrifice was not permitted. 
He was not, as he had expected, to be sent back in triumph 
to England supported by threats of interdict and excommu- 
nication to triumph over his enemies. But he was reinstated 
as archbishop. He was assigned a residence at the Cister- 
cian monastery of Pontigny, thirty miles from Sens ; and 
there he was directed to remain quiet and avoid for the 
present irritating the king further.^ 

The king was sufficiently irritated already. The support 
which Lewis had given to Becket meant too probably that 
war with France was not far off. Becket himself was virt- 
ually in rebellion, and his character made it easy to foresee 
the measures which he would adopt if not prevented. The 
posts were watched, strangers were searched for letters. 
English subjects were forbidden to introduce brief, bull, or 
censure either from the pope or from the archbishop. The 
archbishop's estates were sequestrated. Were he allowed 
to retain his large income and spend it abroad, he would 
use it to buy friends among the cardinals. The see was 
put under administrators — the rents, so Henry afterwards 
swore, were chiefly laid out in management, and the surplus 
was distributed in charity. The incumbents of the arch- 
bishop's benefices being his special creatures were expelled, 
and loyal priests \vere put in their places. Another harder 
measure was adopted. All his relations, all his connections 
and dependents, except a few who gave securities for good 
conduct, were banished from England, four hundred of 
them, men, women, and children. Either it was feared the 

1 The answer supposed to have been given by the pope, permitting him 
to use the censures, belongs to the following year. It refers to the seques- 
tration of the Canterbury estates, and this did not take place till after Becket 
had been settled at Pontigny. 
4 



60 Life and Times of 

archbishop would employ them to disturb the country, or it 
was mere vengeance, or it was to make Becket an expen- 
sive guest to Lewis. 

All this Becket was obliged to bear with. Armed as he 
was with lightnings, he was forbidden to make use of them. 
Nay, worse, the pope himself could not even yet be de- 
pended on. Angry as he was, the king wrote to propose 
that Alexander should visit him in England, or, if this were 
impossible, that the pope, Lewis, and Henry should meet in 
Normandy and take measures together for the common 
welfare of Christendom. Henry had no wish to join Bar- 
barossa if he could help it ; and neither the pope nor Lewis 
could wish to force him. If such a meeting came off, it was 
easy to foresee the issue. John of Salisbury, who was 
Becket's agent at the French court, when he heard what 
was intended, wrote that it must be prevented at all haz- 
ards. In terms not very complimentary to the holy father's 
understanding, the archbishop implored Alexander to con- 
sent to no meeting with the King of England, except one 
at which he should himself be present. " The king," he 
said, " is so subtle with his words that he would confound 
the apostolic religion itself. He will find the weak points 
of the pope's character, and will trip him up to his destruc- 
tion." 1 

The King of France (John of Salisbury wrote to Becket) ad- 
mits that he fears to urge the pope to use the censures in your 
behalf. If this be so now, how will it be when our king is here 
in person, arguing, promising, and threatening with the skill 
which you know that he possesses ? He has secured the Count of 
Flanders — the countess, like a prudent matron, is thinking of 
marriages for her children — and has sent him three hundred ells 
of linen to make shirts. The Archbishop of Rheims is the count's 

dear friend I advise you, therefore, to trust in God and 

give yourself to prayer. Put away thoughts of this world ; pray 

1 " Sed et citius poterit apostolica circumveniri religio ex varietate ver- 
borutn regis .... et si rex infirmiora domini papae prjenoverit exitus via- 
rum suarum obstruet offendiculis." — Materials, vol. ii. p. 346. 



Thomas BecJcet. 61 

and meditate. The Psalms will be better reading for you than 
philosophy; and to confer with spiritual men, whose example 
may influence your devotion, will profit you more than indulg- 
ing in litigious speculations. I say this from my heart: take it 
as you please. 

These words show Becket to us as through an inverted 
telescope, the magnifying mist blown away, in his true out- 
lines and true proportions. The true Becket, as the pope 
knew him, was not the person peculiarly fitted to be the 
Church's champion in a cause which was really sacred. 
John of Salisbury thought evidently at this time that there 
was no longer any hope that the archbishop would really 
succeed. He wished, he said in a letter to the Bishop of 
Exeter, to make his peace with the king. He could not 
desert the archbishop, but he was loyal to his sovereign. 
He called God to witness how often he had rebuked the 
archbishop for his foolish violence.-^ He could not promise 
that he would quit his old master's service, but in all else he 
would be guided by the Bishop of Exeter's advice. 

1 " Novit enim cordium inspector quod ssepius et asperius quam aliquia 
mortalium corripuerim dominum archiepiscopiun de his in quibus ab initio 
dominura regem et suos zelo quodam inconsultius visus est ad amaritudi- 
nem provocasse," etc. — Letters, vol. i. p. 203, ed. Giles. 



62 Life and Times of 



CHAPTER VI. 

Meanwhile the quarrel between Becket and the King 
of England became the topic of the hour throughout 
Europe. Which was right and which was wrong, what the 
pope would do or ought to do, and whether England would 
join Germany in the schism — these questions were the 
theme of perpetual discussions in council and conclave, 
were debated in universities, and were fought over at con- 
vent and castle dinner-tables. Opinions were so divided 
that, in a cause which concerned Heaven so nearly, people 
were looking for Heaven to give some sign. As facts were 
wanting, legend took the place of them, and stories began to 
spread, either at the time or immediately after, of direct 
and picturesque manifestations of grace which had been 
vouchsafed in Becket's favor. It was said that when dining 
with Pope Alexander he had twice unconsciously turned 
water into wine. At Pontigny he had been graciously 
visited by our Lady herself. He had left England ill pro- 
vided with clothes. His wardrobe was in disorder ; his 
drawers especially, besides being dirty, were in holes. He 
was specially delicate in such matters, and was too modest 
to confess his difficulties. He stayed at home one day alone 
to do the repairs himself. He was pricking his fingers and 
succeeding indifferently, when our Lady — who, as the biog- 
raphers tell us, had been taught to sew when she was at 
Nazareth — came in, sat down, took the drawers out of the 
archbishop's hand, mended them excellently, and went as 
she had come. The archbishop had not recognized his 
visitor. Soon after a singular case of church discipline was 
referred to his decision. A young Frenchman, specially 



Thomas Becket, 53 

devoted to the Virgin Mary, had built a chapel in her honor 
not far from Pontigny, had placed her image over the altar, 
and had obtained ordination himself that he might make his 
daily offerings there. But he neither would nor could re- 
peat any mass but the mass of the Virgin. The authorities 
reprimanded him but to no purpose. Our Lady filled his 
soul, and left no room for any other object. The irregular- 
ity was flagrant — the devotion was commendable. Becket 
was consulted as to what should be done, and Becket sent 
for the offender and gently put before him that he was 
making a scandal which must positively cease. The youth 
rushed away in despair, and flung himself before our Lady's 
imaiie, declarinjj that his love was for her and for her alone. 
She must save him from interference, or he would pull the 
chapel down and do other wild and desperate things. The 
eyes of the image began to smile, the neck bent, the lips 
opened. " Have no fear, carissime," it said : " go to the 
archbishop. Entreat again to be allowed to continue your 
devotions to me. If he refuses, ask him if he remembers 
who mended his drawers." We may guess how the story 
ended. 

With tales of this kind floating in the air, the first year of 
Becket's exile wore out, the pope giving uncertain answers 
to the passionate appeals which continued to be made to him, 
according to the fortune of the Emperor Frederick in Italy. 
Frederick being at last driven out of Lombardy, the pope 
recovered heart, and held out brighter prospects. He sent 
Becket permission to excommunicate the persons in occu- 
pation of his estates and benefices, and he promised to ratify 
his sentence if opportunely issued. He did not permit, but 
also did not specially forbid, him to excommunicate the 
king, while Lewis, with Becket's knowledge, and in the 
opinion of the cardinals who came afterwards to inquire 
into his conduct, at Becket's direct instigation, prepared to 
invade Normandy. Henry, well informed of what was 
coming, began now to turn to Germany in earnest. By 



54 Life and Times of 

the advice of his barons, as he said, he wrote to Reginald, 
Frederick's archbishop chancellor, to tell him that he was 
about to send an embassy to the pope to demand that he 
should be relieved of Becket, and that the Constitutions 
should be ratified. If justice was refused him, he and his 
people were prepared to renounce their allegiance to Alex- 
ander and to unite with Germany.^ The chancellor was 
himself invited to England to arrange a marriage be- 
tween the Princess Matilda and the Duke of Saxony. A 
decided step of this kind it was thought might bring the 
pojDe to his senses. 

Separation from Rome, indeed, was the true alternative : 
and had the country been prepared to follow Henry, and 
had Henry himself been prepared at the bottom of his mind 
to defy the pope and the worst that he could do, the great 
schism between the Teutonic and Latin races might have 
been antedated, and the course of history been changed. 
But Henry was threatening with but half a heart, and the 
country was less prepared than he. In Germany itself, the 
pope in the end proved too strong for the emperor. In 
England, even WicklifFe was premature. With all its enor- 
mous faults, the Roman Catholic organization in both coun- 
tries was producing better fruits on the whole than any 
other which could have been substituted for it ; and almost 
three centuries had yet to pass, bringing with them accumu- 
lating masses of insincerities and injustices, before Europe 
could become ripe for a change. A succession of Beckets 
would have precipitated a rupture, whatever might be the 
cost or consequences ; but the succeeding prelates were 
men of the world as well as statesmen, and were too wise to 
press theories to their logical consequences. 

The Archbishop of Cologne came to London with the 

taint of his schism upon him. The court entertained him. 

The German marriage was arranged. But Henry received 

a startling intimation that he must not try the barons too 

1 Giles, vol. i. p. 316. 



Thomas Bechet. 55 

far. They had supported him in what they held to be 
reasonable demands to which the pope might be expected 
to consent. They were not ready to support him in a re- 
volt from Eome, even though disguised behind the name of 
an antipope. The hunchbacked Earl of Leicester refused 
Barbarossa's chancellor the kiss of peace in open court at 
Westminster, and on his departure the altars at which the 
schismatic prelate had said mass were destroyed.^ 

Alexander meanwhile had written to Foliot, directing 
him and the Bishop of Hereford to remonstrate with the 
king, to entreat him to act in conformity with his past repu- 
tation and to put an end to the scandal which he had caused, 
hinting that if Henry persisted in refusing he might be un- 
able to restrain the archbishop from excommunicating him. 
The two bishops discharged their commission. " The king," 
Foliot replied to the pope, " took what we said in excellent 
part. He assured us that his affection towards your holiness 
remained as it had been, but he said that he had stood by 
you in your misfortunes, and that he had met with a bad 
return. He had hindered no one from going to you on 
your invitation, and he meant to hinder no one. As to 
appeals, he merely claimed that each case should be first 
thoroughly heard in his own courts. If justice could not 
be had there, appeals to Rome might remain without ob- 
jection from himself. If the emperor was excommunicated, 
he promised to break off correspondence with him. As to 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, he had not been expelled 
from England ; he had left it of his own accord, and might 
return when he pleased. To the Church, now as always, 
he wished to submit his differences with the archbishop." 

If this was not all which the pope might expect, Foliot 
advised him to be contented with it. " The king," he con- 
tinued, "having consented to defer to the Church, considers 
that right is on his side. Let your holiness therefore be- 
ware of measures which may drive him and his subjects into 
1 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, 1165. 



56 Life and Times of 

revolt. A wounded limb may be healed ; a limb cut off is 
lost forever. Some of us may bear persecution on your 
account, but there will not be wanting those who will bow 
their knee to Baal. Men can be found to fill the English 
sees who will obey the antipope. Many, indeed, already 
wish for the change." -^ 

The pope, who did not understand the English character, 
was as much disturbed as Henry could have desired to see 
him. He found that he had encouraojed Becket too far. 
He wrote to press upon him that the days were evil ; that 
he must endeavor to conciliate the king ; that he must on 
no account excommunicate him, or lay England under in- 
terdict, or venture any violent courses, at any rate before 
the ensuing Easter.^ He wrote affectionately to Henry 
himself. He thanked the two bishops with the utmost 
warmth, and expressed himself delighted with the accounts 
which he received of the king's frame of mind.^ The Arch- 
bishop of Rouen and the Empress Matilda had written to 
him to the same purpose, and had given him equal pleasure. 
If Foliot could bring about a reconciliation, he would love 
him forever. Meanwhile he would follow Foliot's advice 
and keep Becket quiet. 

A very slight concession from Becket would now have 
made an arrangement possible, for Henry was tired of the 
quarrel. He invited the Norman prelates to meet him at a 
conference at Chinon. The archbishop was expected to 
attend, and peace was then to have been arranged. In this 
spirit the Bishop of Hereford addressed the archbishop him- 
self, entreating him to agree to moderate conditions. Far 
away was Becket from concessions. He knew better than 
the pope the state of English feeling. He was in corre- 
spondence (it is likely enough) with the Earl of Leicester. 
At all events he must have heard of Leicester's treatment 

1 Foliot to the Pope, 1165. Hoveden (ed. Giles), vol. i. p. 231. 

2 Giles, vol. i. p. 324. 

* " Gaudemus et exultamus super ea devotione ejusdem regis." 



Thomas Bechet, 57 

of Reginald of Cologne. He knew that in fearing that 
England would go into schism the pope was frightened by 
a shadow. He had not defied king, peers, and bishops at 
Northampton that the fight should end in a miserable com- 
promise. Sharply he rebuked the Bishop of Hereford for 
his timid counsels. " For you," he said, " I am made anath- 
ema, and when you should stand by me you advise me to 
yield. You should rather have bidden me draw the sword 
of Peter and avenge the blood of the saints. I mourn over 
you as over my firstborn. Up, my son. Cry aloud and 
cease not. Lift up your voice, lest God's anger fall on you 
and all the nation perish. I grieve for the king. Tribula- 
tion impends over him. They have devoured Jacob and 
laid waste his dwelling-place." ^ 

To John of Salisbury Becket announced that his patience 
was exhausted, that when Easter was passed he would be 
free, and that in his own opinion he ought to forbear no 
longer. He desired to know how far his friend agreed 
with him. John of Salisbury was more prudent than his 
master. " Precipitate action," he said, " may expose you to 
ridicule and ruin. You ask my advice. I recommend you 
not to rely on the Holy See. Write to the empress mother, 
write to the Archbishop of Rouen and the other prelates. 
Tell them you are ready to obey the law and go back if 
you are treated with justice. The adversary will not agree 
to conditions really fair, but you will have set yourself right 
with the world. Should the king be more moderate than I 
think he will be, do not stand upon securities. Content 
yourself with a promise under the king's hand and the as- 
surance of the empress mother. Do not try the censures. 
You know my opinion about this, and you once agreed with 
me. The king is not afraid of excommunication. The bish- 
ops and most of the clergy have stood by him ; some may 
be with us in heart, but they are not to be depended on." ^ 

1 Becket to the Bishop of Hereford, Hoveden. I am obliged greatly to 
compress the diffuse rhetoric of the archbi>hop. 

2 John of Salisbm-y to Becket, April, 1166 (abridged). 



58 Life and Times of 

Becket, like most persons of his temperament, asked ad- 
vice without meaning to follow it. He addressed the king 
in a letter which Herbert describes as being of extreme 
sweetness. It was to entreat him to let loose the bride of 
Christ whom he held in captivity, and to warn him that if 
he persevered in his wicked ways, " Christ would gird his 
sword upon his thigh," and would descend from heaven to 
punish him. Inflated language of this kind was not general 
at that time. It was peculiar to Becket, and we need not 
be surprised that it produced no effect on Henry. He went 
to Normandy to the Chinon conference immediately after 
Easter, 1166, hoping there to meet Becket and speak with 
him and with the other prelates as with reasonable men. 
He did not find Becket there, but he found a second letter 
from him, which from a saint would have tried the temper 
of a more patient sovereign than Henry, and from a man 
whom he had known so lately as a defaulting chancellor 
and unscrupulous politician was insolent and absurd. After 
reproaching the king for allowing him to live on the charity 
of Lewis of France, the archbishop proceeded : — 

You are my king, my lord, and my spiritual son. As you are 
my king, I owe you reverence and admonition ; as you are my 
lord, I owe you such obedience as consists with the honor of 
God; as you are my son, I owe you the chastisement which is 
due from the father to the child. You hold your authority from 
the Church, which consists of clergy and laymen. The clergy 
have sole charge of things spiritual : kings, earls, and counts 
have powers delegated to them from the Church, to preserve 
peace and the Church's unity. Delegated from the Church, 1 
say. Therefore it rests not with you to tell bishops whom they 
may excommunicate, or to force clergy to their answers in secu- 
lar courts, or to interfere with tithes, or do any of those things 
to which you pretend in the name of custom. Remember your 
coronation oath. Restore my property. Allow me to return to 
Canterbury, and I will obey you as far as the honor of God and 
the Holy See and our sacred order permits me. Refuse, and be 



Tliomas Becket. 69 

assured you will not fail to experience the severe displeasure of 
Almighty God.^ 

This letter appears to have been placed in Henry's hands 
immediately before he met the Norman bishops. On en- 
tering the conference he was ill with agitation. Persons 
present said that he was in tears. He told the bishops that 
Becket was aiming at his destruction, soul and body. He 
said they were no better than traitors for not protecting 
him more effectually from the violence of a single man.^ 
The Archbishop of Rouen protested against the word " trai- 
tors." But it was no time for niceties of expression. War 
with France was on the point of breaking out, and Becket, 
it was now plain, meant to give it the character of a sacred 
war by excommunicating Henry. Easter was past: he 
was free to act, and clearly enough he meant to act. The 
Bishop of Lisieux advised an instant appeal to the pope, 
which would keep Becket's hands tied for the moment. 
He and another bishop rushed off to Pontigny to serve the 
notice on him. They arrived too late. Before launching 
his thunderbolts Becket had gone to Soissons, there to pre- 
pare for the operation. 

At Soissons were to be found in special presence the 
Blessed Virgin and St. Gregory, whose assistance the arch- 
bishop considered would be peculiarly valuable to him ; and 
not they only, but another saint, Beatus Drausius, the 
patron of pugilists and duellists, who promised victory to 
intending combatants on their passing a night at his shrine.^ 

1 Becket to the King, May, 1166 (abridged). 

2 " Tandem dixit quod omnes proditores erant, qui eum adhibitS. opera 
et diligentia ab unius hominis infestatione nolebant impedire." 

3 " Archiepiscopus noster in procinctu ferendae sententite constitutus iter 
arripuerat ad urbem Suessionum orationis causa, utBeatoeVirgini, cujusibi 
meraoria Celebris est, et Beato Drausio, ad quern confugiunt pugnaturi, et 
Beato Gregorio Anglicanae EcclesiiB fundatori, qui in eudem urbe requiescit, 
agonem suum precibus commendaret. Est autem Beatus Drausius gloriosis- 
simus confessor qui, sicut Franci et Lotharingi credunt, pugiles qui ad me- 
moriam ejus pernoctant reddit invictos." — Jolin of Salisbury to the Bishop 
of Exeter. Letters, vol. i. p. 227, ed. Giles. 



60 Life and Times of 

Becket gave St. Drausius three nights — or perhaps one 
to each saint — and thus fortified he betook himself to 
Vezelay, where at Whitsuntide vast numbers of people 
assembled from all parts of France. There from the pulpit 
after sermon on Whitsuntide, with the appropriate cere- 
monies of bells and lighted candles quenched, he took ven- 
geance at last upon his enemies. He suspended the Bishop 
of Salisbury. He cursed John of Oxford and the Arch- 
deacon of Ilchester, two leading churchmen of the king's 
party. He cursed Chief Justice de Luci, who had directed 
the sequestration of his see. He cursed Ranulf de Broc 
and every person employed in administering his estates. 
Finally he cursed every one who maintained the Constitu- 
tions of Clarendon, and he released the bishops from their 
promise to observe them. A remnant of prudence or a re- 
port of the king's illness led him partially to withhold his 
hand. He did not actually curse Henry, but he threatened 
that he shortly would curse him unless he repented, 

In high delight with himself the archbishop issued a 
pastoral to the bishops of England telling them what he 
had done, talking in his usual high style of the rights of 
priests over kings and princes, and ordering them at their 
souls' peril to see that the sentence was obeyed. He wrote 
at the same time to the pope inclosing the terms of the 
excommunication, his condemnation of the Constitutions, 
and the threats which he had addressed to the king. These 
threats he declared his intention of carrying into effect un- 
less the king showed speedy signs of submission, and he 
required Alexander in a tone of imperious consequence to 
confirm what he had done. 

On the arrival of the censures in England the bishops 
met in London and determined on a further appeal to the 
pope. They addressed a unanimous and remarkable re- 
monstrance to him, going into the origin of the quarrel, in- 
sisting on the abominable conduct of many of the clergy, 
the necessity oi reform, and the moderation which the king 



Thomas Becket. 61 

had shown. ^ The Constitutions which he had adopted they 
declared to have been taken from the established customs 
of the realm. If they appeared objectionable, his holiness 
need but point to the articles of which he disapproved, and 
they should be immediately altered. The archbishop's un- 
called-for violence had been the sole obstacle to an arrange- 
ment. 

With this letter and others from the king an embassy 
was dispatched to Rome, John of Oxford, whom Becket 
had personally excommunicated, being significantly one of 
its members. 

Pending the result of the appeal, the English bishops in 
a body remonstrated with Becket himself. They reminded 
him of his personal obligations to the king, and of the 
dangers which he was provoking. The king, they said, 
had listened coldly hitherto to the advances of Germany. 
But these good dispositions might not last forever. For 
the archbishop to scatter curses without allowing the per- 
sons denounced an opportunity of answering for themselves, 
was against reason and precedent; and they had placed 
themselves under the protection of his holiness. 

Becket was not to be frightened by threats of German al- 
liance. He knew better. He lectured the bishops for their 
want of understanding. He rebuked them for their coward- 
ice and want of faith. The Bishop of London had recalled 
to him unpleasant passages in his own past history. The 
tone of Foliot as well as his person drove Becket wild. He 
spoke of the Bishop of London as an Ahitophel and a Doeg. 

Your letter (he replied to him) is like a scorpion with a sting 
in its tail. You profess obedience to me, and to avoid obe- 
dience you appeal to the pope. Little will you gain by it. You 
have no feeling for me, or for the Church, or for the king, whose 

i " Qui cum pacem regni sui enormi insolentium quorundam clericorum 
excessu iion mediocriter turbari cognosceret, clero debitam exhibens rever- 
entiam eorundem excessus ad ecclesiaj judices retulit episcopos, ut gladiua 
gladio subveniat." — Ad Alexandrum Pontijjcem. Hoveden, vol. i. p. 266. 



62 Life and Times of 

soul is perishing. You blame me for threatening him. What 
father will see his son go astray and hesitate to restrain that 
son ? Who will not use the rod that he may spare the sword ? 
The ship is in the storm : I am at the helm, and you bid me 
sleep. To him who speaks thus to me I reply, " Get thee be- 
hind me, Satan!" The king, you say, desires to do what is 
right. My clergy are banished, my possessions are taken from 
me, the sword hangs over my neck. Do you call this right? 
Tell the king- that the Lord of men and angels has established 
two powers, princes and priests — the first earthly, the second 
spiritual; the first to obey, the second to command. He who 
breaks this order breaks the ordinance of God. Tell him it is 
no dishonor to him to submit to those to whom God himself 
defers, callino- them g-ods in the sacred writings. For thus he 
speaks: " I have said ye are gods; " and again, " I will make 
thee a God unto Pharaoh;" " Thou shalt take nothing from the 
gods " (^. e. the priests).^ .... The king may not judge his 
judges ; the lips of the priest shall keep wisdom. It is written, 
" Thou shalt require the law at his mouth, for he is the angel of 
God." 

The Catholic Church would have had but a brief career 
in this world if the rulers of it had been so wild of mind as 
this astonishing martyr of Canterbury. The air-bubble, 
when blown the fullest and shining the brightest, is nearest 
to collapsing into a drop of dirty water. John of Salisbury, 
sympathizing with him and admiring him as he generally 
did, saw clearly that the pope could never sanction so pre- 
posterous an attitude. " I have little trust in the Church 
of Rome," he said. " I know the ways of it and the needs 
of it too well. So greedy, so dishonest are the Romans, 
that they use too often the license of power, and take dis- 
pensations to grant what they say is useful to the common- 
wealth, however fatal it may be to religion." ^ 

1 " Non indignetur itaque dominus noster deferre illis quibus omnium 
Summus deferre non dedignatur, deos appellans eos saepius in sacris lite- 
ris. Sic enim dicit, 'Ego dixi, Dii estis,' etc.; et iterum, 'Constitui te 
deuni Pharaouis,' ' Et diis non detrahes,' i. e. sacerdotibus," etc. — Becket 
to Foliot. Hoveden, vol. i. p. 261. 

2 "Nee de ecclesia Romana, cujus mores et necessitates nobis innotu- 



Thomas Becket, 63 

The first practical effect of the excommunication was the 
recoil of the blow upon the archbishop's entertainers. In 
the shelter of a Cistercian abbey in France, an English 
subject was committing treason and levying war against his 
sovereign and his country. A chapter of the Cistercian 
Order was held in September. King Henry sent a message 
to the general, that, if his abbot continued to protect Becket, 
the Cistercians in England would be suppressed, and their 
property confiscated. The startled general did not dare to 
resist ; a message was sent to Pontigny ; in the fluttered 
dovecote it was resolved that Becket must go, and it was a 
cruel moment to him. A fresh asylum was provided for 
him at Sens. But he had grown accustomed to Pontigny, 
and had led a pleasant life there. On his first arrival he 
had attempted asceticisms, but his health had suffered, and 
his severities had been relaxed. He was out of spirits at 
his departure. His tears were flowing. The abbot cheered 
him up, laughed at his dejection, and told him there was 
nothing in his fate so particularly terrible. Becket said that 
he had dreamt the night before that he was to be martyred. 
" Martyrdom ! " laughed the abbot ; " what has a man who 
eats and drinks like you to do with martyrdom ? The cup 
of wine which you drink has small affinity with the cup of 
martyrdom." " I confess," said Becket, " that T indulge in 
pleasures of the flesh. Yet the good God has deigned to 
reveal my fate to me." -^ 

Sad at heart, the archbishop removed to Sens ; yet if the 
pope stood firm, all might yet be well. 

ernnt, multum confido. Tot et tantse sunt necessitates, tanta aviditas et 
in-.probitas Romanorum, ut interdum utatur licentia. potestatis, procuret- 
que ex dispensatione quod reipublicai dicitur expedire, etsi non expediat 
religioni." — To Becket. Letters, 1166. 
1 " ' Ergo martyrio interibis ? Quid esculento et temulentoet martyri? 
Nou bene conveniunt, nee in una sede morantur, 
calix vini quod potas et calix martyrii.' 'Fateor,' inquit, * corporeis vo« 
luptatibus indulgeo. Bonus tamen Dominus, qui justilicat impium, in- 
digno dignatus est revelare uiystcrium.' " — Materiids, vol. i. p. 51. 



64 Life and Times of 



CHAPTER VII. 

The archbishop's letters show conclusively that the Con- 
stitutions were not the real causes of the dispute with the 
king. The king was willing to leave the Constitutions to 
be modified by the pope. The archbishojj's contest, lying 
concealed in his favorite phrases, " saving my order," " sav- 
ing the honor of God," was for the supremacy of the Church 
over the Crown ; for the degradation of the civil power into 
the position of delegate of the pope and bishops. All 
authority was derived from God. The clergy were the di- 
rect ministers of God. Therefore all authority was derived 
from God through them. However well the assumption 
might appear in theory, it would not work in practice, and 
John of Salisbury was right in concluding that the pope 
would never sanction an assumption which, broadly stated 
and really acted on, would shake the fabric of the Church 
throughout Europe. Alexander was dreaming of peace 
when the news reached him of the excommunications at Ve- 
zelay. The news that Chief Justice de Luci had hanged 
500 felonious clerks in England would have caused him less 
annoyance. Henry's envoys brought with them the bishops' 
appeal, and renewed the demand for cardinal legates to be 
sent to end the quarrel. This time the pope decided that 
the legates should go, carrying with them powers to take off 
Becket's censures. He prohibited Becket himself from 
pursuing his threats further till the cardinals' arrival. To 
Henry he sent a private letter — which, however, he per- 
mitted him to show if circumstances made it necessary — 
declaring beforehand that any sentences wliich the arch- 



I 



Thomas BecJcet. 65 

bishop might issue against himself or his subjects should be 
void.-"^ 

The humiliation was terrible ; Becket's victims were free, 
and even rewarded. John of Oxford came back from Rome 
with the Deanery of Salisbury. Worst of all, the cardinals 
were coming, and those the most dreaded of the whole 
body. Cardinal Otho and Cardinal William of Pavia. One 
of them, said John of Salisbury, was light and uncertain, the 
other crafty and false, and both made up of avarice. These 
were the ministers of the Holy See, for whose pretensions 
Becket was fighting. This was his estimate of them when 
they were to try his own cause. His letters at this moment 
were filled with despair. " Ridicule has fallen on me," he 
said, "and shame on the pope. I am to be obeyed no 
longer. I am betrayed and given to destruction. My de- 
position is a settled thing. Of this, at least, let the pope 
assure himself: never will I accept the Cardinal of Pavia for 
my judge. When they are rid of me, I hear he is to be 
my successor at Canterbury." ^ 

Becket, however, was not the man to leave the field while 
life was in him. There was still hope, for war had broken 
out at last, and Henry and Lewis were killing and burning 
in each other's territories. If not the instigator, Becket was 
the occasion, and Lewis, for his own interests, would still be 
forced to stand by him. He was intensely superstitious. 
His cause, he was convinced, was God's cause. Hitherto 
God had allowed him to fiiil on account of his own deficien- 
cies, and the deficiencies required to be amended. Like 
certain persons who cut themselves with knives and lancet?, 
he determined now to mortify his flesh in earnest. When 
settled in his new life at Sens, he rose at daybreak, prayed 
\n his oratory, said mass, and prayed and wept again. Five 
times each day and night his chaplain flogged him. His 
food was bread and water, his bed the floor. A hair shirt 

1 The Pope to Henry, December 20, 1166. 

2 Becket's Letters, Giles, vol. ii. p. 60. 

5 



66 Life and Times of 

was not enough without hair drawers which reached his 
knees, and both were worn till they swarmed with vermin.^ 
The cardinals approached, and the prospect grew hourly 
blacker. The pope rebuked Lewis for the war. The op- 
portunity of the cardinals' presence was to be used for res- 
toration of peace. Poor as Becket was, he could not ap- 
proach these holy beings on their accessible side. "The 
Cardinal of Pavia," said John of Salisbury, "thinks only of 
the king's money, and has no fear of God in him. Cardinal 
Otho is better : Romanus tamen et cardinalis (but he is a 
Roman and a cardinal). If we submit our cause to them, 
we lose it to a certainty. If we refuse we offend the King 
of France." The Cardinal of Pavia wrote to announce to 
Becket his arrival in France and the purpose of his mission. 
Becket replied with a violent letter, of which he sent a copy 
to John of Salisbury, but dispatched it before his friend 
could stop him. John of Salisbury thought that the arch- 
bishop had lost his senses. " Compare the cardinal's letter 
and your answer to it," he said. " What had the cardinal 
done that you should tell him he was giving you jDoison ? 
You have no right to insult a cardinal and the pope's legate 
on his first communication with you. Were he to send 
your letter to Rome, you might be charged with contu- 
macy. He tells you he is come to close the dispute to the 
honor of God and the Church. What poison is there in 
this ? He is not to blame because he cautions you not to 
provoke the king further. Your best friends have often 
given you the same advice." 

With great difficulty Becket was brought to consent to 

1 Myths gathered about the state of these garments. One day, we are 
told, he was dining with the Queen of France. She observed that his 
sleeves were fastened unusually tightly at the wrist, and that something 
moved inside them. He tried to evade her curiosity, for the moving 
things were maggots. But she pressed her questions till he was obliged 
to loosen the strings. Pearls of choicest size and color rolled upon the 
table. The queen wished to keep one, but it could not be. The pearls 
were restored to the sleeve, and became maggots as before. — Materials, 
vol. ii. p. 296. 



Thomas Becket. 67 

see the cardinals. They came to him at Sens, but stayed 
for a short time only, and went on to the king in Nor- 
mandy. The archbishop gathered no comfort from his 
speech with them. He took to his bell and candles again, 
and cursed the Bishop of London. He still intended to 
curse the king and declare an interdict. He wrote to a 
friend, Cardinal Hyacinth, at Rome, to say that he would 
never submit to the arbitration of the cardinal legates, and 
bidding him urge the pope to confirm the sentences which 
he was about to pronounce.-^ He implored the pope him- 
self to recall the cardinals and unsheath the sword of Peter. 
To his entire confusion, he learned that the king held a 
letter from the pope declaring that his curses would be so 
much wasted breath. 

The pope tried to soothe him. Soft words cost Alex- 
ander nothing ; and, while protecting Henry from spiritual 
thunders, he assured the archbishop himself that his power 
should not be taken from him. Nor, indeed, had the vio- 
lence of Becket's agitation any real occasion. Alexander 
wished to frighten him into submission, but had no inten- 
tion of compromising himself by an authoritative decision. 
Many months passed away, and Becket still refused to 
plead before the cardinals. At length they let out that 
their powers extended no further than advice, and Becket, 
thus satisfied, consented to an official conference. The meet- 
ing was held near Gisors, on the frontiers of France and 
Normandy, on the 18th of November, 1167. The arch- 
bishop came attended by his exiled English friends. With 
the cardinals were a large body of Norman bishops and 
abbots. The cardinals, earnest for peace if tliey could bring 
their refractory patient to consent to it, laid before him the 
general unfitness of the quarrel. They accused him of in- 
gratitude, of want of loyalty to his sovereign, and, among 
other things, of having instigated the war.^ 

1 Giles, vol. ii. p. 86. 

2 "Imponens ei inter ctetera quod excitaverat guerram regis Franco- 
rum." — Materials, vol. i. p. 66. 





68 Life and Times of 

The last charge the archbishop sharply denied, and Lewia 
afterwards acquitted him also. For the rest he said that the 
king had begun by attacking the Chu^^ch. He was willing 
to consent to any reasonable terms of arrangement, with 
security for God's honor, proper respect for himself, and 
the restoration of his estates. They asked if he would recog- 
nize the Constitutions ; he said that no such engagement had 
been required of his predecessors, and ought not to be re- 
quired of him. " The book of abominations," as he called 
the Constitutions, was produced and read, and he challenged 
the cardinals to affirm that Christian men should obey such 
laws. 

Henry was prepared to accept the smallest concession ; 
nothing need be said about the Constitutions if Becket 
would go back to Canterbury, resume his duties, and give 
a general promise to be quiet. The archbishop answered 
that there was a proverb in England that silence gave con- 
sent. The question had been raised, and could not now be 
passed over. The cardinals asked if he would accept their 
judgment on the whole cause. He said that he would go 
into court before them or any one whom the pope might 
appoint, as soon as his property was restored to him. In 
his present poverty he could not encounter the expense of 
a lawsuit. 

Curious satire on Becket's whole contention, none the 
less so that he was himself unconscious of the absurdity ! 
He withdrew from the conference, believing that he had 
gained a victory, and he again began to meditate drawing 
his spiritual sword. Messengers on all sides again flew off 
to Rome, from the king and English bishops, from the car- 
dinals, from Becket himself. The king and bishops placed 
themselves under the j^ope's protection should the arch- 
bishop begin his curses. The Constitutions were once more 
placed at the pope's discretion to modify at his pleasure. 
The cardinals wrote charging Becket with being the sole 
cause of the continuance of the quarrel, and, in spite of his 



Thomas BecJcet. 69 

denials, persisting in accusing him of having caused the war. 
Becket prayed again for the cardinals' recall, and for the 
pope's sanction of more vigorous action. 

He had not yet done with the cardinals ; they knew him, 
and they knew his restless humor. Pending fresh resolu- 
tions from Rome, they suspended him, and left him inca- 
pable either of excommunicating or exercising any other 
function of spiritual authority whatsoever. Once more he 
was plunged into despair. 

Through those legates, he cried in his anguish to the 
pope, "We are made a derision to those about us. My 
lord, have pity on me. You are my refuge. I can scarcely 
breathe for anguish. My harp is turned to mourning, and 
my joy to sadness. The last error is worse than the first." 
The pope seemed deaf to his lamentations. The suspen- 
sion was not removed. Plans were formed for his transla- 
tion from Canterbury to some other preferment. He said 
he would rather be killed. The pope wrote so graciously 
to Henry that the king said he for the first time felt that 
he was sovereign in his own realm. John of Salisbury's 
mournful conviction was that the game was at last played 
out. " We know those Romans," he sighed : " qui munere ■ 
potentior est, potentior est jure. The antipope could not 
have done more for the king than they have done. It will 
be written in the annals of the Holy See that the herald of 
truth, the champion of liberty, the preacher of the law of 
the Lord, has been deprived and treated as a criminal at 
tlie threats of an English prince." 

It is hard to say what influence again turned the scale. 
Perhaps Alexander was encouraged by the failures of Bar- 
barossa in Italy. Perhaps Henry had been too triumphant, 
and had irritated the pope and cardinals by producing their 
letters, and speaking too frankly of the influences by which 
the holy men had been bound to his side.^ In acceptmg 
Henry's money they had not bargained for exposure. They 
1 John of Salisbury, Letters, vol. ii. p. 144, ed. Giles 



70 Life and Times of 

were ashamed and sore, and Becket grew again into favor. 
The pope at the end of 1168 gave him back his powers, 
permitting him to excommunicate even Henry himself un- 
less he repented before the ensuing Easter. The legates 
were recalled as Becket desired. Cardinal Otho recom- 
mended the king to make his peace on the best terms which 
he could get. Jphn of Salisbury, less confident, but with 
amused contempt of the chameleonlike Alexander, advised 
Henry, through the Bishop of Poitiers, to treat with the 
archbishop immediately, nee mediante Romano episcopo, nee 
rege Francice nee opera eardinalium, without help either of 
pope, of French king or cardinals. Since Becket could not 
be frightened, Alexander was perhaps trying what could be 
done with Henry ; but he was as eager as any one for an 
end of some kind to a business which was now adding dis- 
grace and scandal to its other mischiefs. Peace was ar- 
ranged at last between Lewis and Henry. The English 
king gave up a point for which he had long contended, and 
consented to do homage for Normandy and Anjou. The 
day after Epiphany, January 7, 1169, the two princes met 
at Montmirail, between Chartres and Le Mans, attended by 
their peers and prelates. 

In the general pacification the central disturber was, if 
possible, to be included. The pope had sent commissioners, 
as we should call them — Simon, prior of Montdieu, Engel- 
bert, prior of Val St. Pierre, and Bernard de Corilo — to 
advise and, if possible, guide Becket into wiser courses. 
The political ceremonies were accomplished, Lewis and 
Henry were reconciled amidst general satisfaction and en- 
thusiasm. Becket was then introduced, led in by the 
Archbishop of Sens, the son of the aged Theobald, Count of 
Blois. Henry and he had not met since the Northampton 
council. He threw himself in apparent humility at the 
king's feet. " My lord," he said, "•' I ask you to forgive me. 
I place myself in God's hands and in yours." ^ At a pre- 

1 " Miserere mei, domine, quia pono me in Deo et vobis ad honorem Dei 
et vestrum." 



Thomas BecJcet. 71 

liminary meeting the pope's envoys and the French clergy 
had urged him to submit without conditions. He had in- 
sisted on his usual reservation, but they had objected to 
saving clauses. He seemed now inclined really to yield, so 
Herbert de Bosham says, and Herbert whispered to him to 
stand firm. 

" My lord king," said Henry, after Becket had made his 
general submission, " and you my lords and prelates, what I 
require of the archbishop is no more than that he will ob- 
serve the laws which have been observed by his predeces- 
sors. I ask him now to give me that promise." Becket no 
longer answered with the reservation of his order : he 
changed the phrase. He promised obedience, saving the 
honor of God. 

" You wish," replied Henry, powerfully disappointed and 
displeased, " to be king in my place. This man," he con- 
tinued, turning to Lewis, " deserted his Church of his own 
will, and he tells you and all men that his cause is the cause 
of the Church. He has governed his Church with as much 
freedom as those who have gone before him, but now he 
stands on God's honor to oppose me wherever he pleases, 
as if I cared for God's honor less than he. I make this 
proposal. Many kings have ruled in England before me, 
some less, some greater than I am ; many holy men have 
been Archbishops of Canterbury before him. Let him be- 
have to me as the most sainted of his predecessors behaved 
to the least worthy of mine, and I am content." 

The king's demand seemed just and moderate to all pres- 
ent.^ The archbishop hesitated. Lewis asked him if he 
aspired to be greater than acknowledged saints. His pred- 
ecessors, he said, had extirpated some abuses but not all. 
There was work which remained to be done. He was 
stopped by a general outcry that the king had yielded 
enough ; the saving clause must be dropped. At once, at 
the tone of command, Becket's spirit rose. Priests and 
1 " Rem justam et modestam visus est omnibus postulare." 



72 Life and Times of 

bishops, he answered defiantly, were not to submit to men of 
this world save with reservations ; he for one would not do 
it. 

The meeting broke up in confusion, A French noble 
said that the archbishop was abusing their hospitality, and 
did not deserve any longer protection. Henry mounted his 
horse and rode sadly away. The pope's agents followed 
him, wringing their hands and begging for some slight ad- 
ditional concession. The king told them that they must 
address themselves to the archbishop, Let the archbishop 
bind himself to obey the laws. If the laws were amiss, 
they should be modified by the pope's wishes. In no 
country in the world, he said, had the clergy so much liberty 
as in England, and in no country were there greater villains 
among them. For the sake of peace he did not insist on 
terms precisely defined. The archbishop was required to 
do nothing beyond what had been done by Anselm. 

Becket, however, was again immovable as stone. Lewis, 
after a brief coldness, took him back into favor. His power 
of cursing had been restored to him. The doubt was only 
whether the pope had recalled the safeguards which he had 
given to the king. The pope's agents, on the failure of the 
conference, gave Henry a second letter, in which Alexander 
told him that, unless peace was made, he could not restrain 
the archbishop longer. Again representatives of the vari- 
ous parties hurried off to Rome, Becket insisting that if the 
pope would only be firm the king would yield, Henry em- 
barrassing the pope more completely than threats of schism 
could have done by placing the Constitutions unreservedly 
in his hands, and binding himself to adopt any change 
which the pope might suggest. Becket, feverish and impa- 
tient, would not wait for the pope's decision, and preferred 
to force his hand by action. He summoned the Bishops of 
London and Salisbury to appear before him. They ap- 
pealed to Rome, but their appeal was disregarded. Appeals, 
as Becket characteristically said, were not allowed in order 



Thomas Becket. 73 

to shield the guilty, but to protect the innocent. On Palm 
Sunday, at Clairvaux, he took once more to his bell and 
candles. He excommunicated the two bishops and every 
one who had been concerned with his property — the Earl 
of Norfolk, Sir Ranulf de Broc, whom he peculiarly hated, 
Robert de Broc, and various other persons. The chief 
justice he threatened. The king he still left unmentioned, 
for fear of provoking the pope too far. 

Harassed on both sides, knowing perfectly well on which 
side good sense and justice lay, yet not daring to declare 
Becket wrong, and accept what, after all that had passed, 
would be construed into a defeat of the Church, the unfort- 
unate Alexander drifted on as he best could, writing letters 
in one sense one day and contradicting them the next. On 
the surface he seemed hopelessly false. The falsehood was 
no more than weakness, a specious anxiety to please the 
king without offending the archbishop, and trusting to time 
and weariness to bring about an end. There is no occasion 
to follow the details of his duplicities. Two legates were 
again sent — not cardinals this time, but ecclesiastical law- 
yers, Gratian and Vivian — bound by oath this time to 
cause no scandal by accepting bribes. As usual, the choice 
was impartial ; Gratian for Becket, Vivian for the king. 
So long as his excommunications were allowed to stand, 
Becket cared little who mi^ht come. He added the chief 
justice to the list of the accursed, as he had threatened to do. 
He wrote to the Bishop of Ostia that, the king's disposition 
could only be amended by punishment. The serpent head 
of the iniquity must now be bruised, and he bade the bishop 
impress the necessity of it upon the pope. Gratian was 
taken into Becket's confidence. Vivian he treated coldly 
and contemptuously. According to Herbert and Becket's 
friends, Gratian reported that the king was shifty and false, 
and that his object was to betray the Church and the arch- 
bishop. Henry himself declared that he assented to all that 
they proposed to him, and Diceto says that the legates were 



74 Life and Times of 

on the point of giving judgment in Henry's favor when the 
Archbishop of Sens interposed and forbade them. In the 
confusion of statement the actions of either party alone can 
be usefully attended to, and behind the acts of all, or at 
least of the pope, there was the usual ambiguity. Alexander 
threatened the kmg. He again empowered Becket to use 
whatever power he possessed to bring him to submission, 
and he promised to confirm his sentences.-^ As certainly he 
had secret conferences at Rome with Henrj'^'s envoys, and 
promised, on the other hand, that the archbishop should not 
be allowed to hurt him. Becket, furious and uncontrollable, 
called the Bishop of London a parricide, an infidel, a Go- 
liath, a son of Belial ; he charged the Bishop of Hereford 
to see that the sentence against Foliot and his brother of 
Salisbury should be observed in England. Henry, on the 
other hand, assured Foliot of protection, and sent him to 
Rome with letters from himself to pursue his appeal and 
receive absolution from the pope himself. The Count of 
Flanders interposed, the Count of Mayence interposed, but 
without effect. At length on the 18 th of November, the 
anniversary of the conference with the cardinals at Gisors, 
Henry and Lewis met again at Montmartre outside Paris, 
Becket and his friends being in attendance in an adjoining 
chapel. Gratian had returned to Rome. Vivian was pres- 
ent, and pressed Lewis to bring the archbishop to reason. 
Lewis really exerted himself, and not entirely unsuccess- 
fully. Henry was even more moderate than before. The 
Constitutions, by the confession of Becket's biographer, 
Herbert, who was with him on the spot, were practically 
abandoned. Henry's only condition was that the archbishop 
should not usurp the functions of the civil power; he, on 
his part, undertaking not to strain the prerogative. Becket 
dropped his saving clause, and consented to make the prom- 
ise required of him, if the king would restore his estates, 
and give him compensation for the arrear rents, which he 
1 " Quod ea quae statuerit non mutabuntur." 



Thomas Bechet. 75 

estimated at 20,000/. Lewis said that money ought not to 
be an obstacle to peace. It was unworthy of the archbishop 
to raise so poor a difficulty. But here, too, Henry gave 
way. An impartial estimate should be made, and Becket 
was to be rejDaid. 

But now, no more than before, had the archbishop any 
real intention of submitting. His only fear was of offend- 
ing Lewis. The Archbishop of Sens had gone to Rome to 
persuade the pope to give him legatine powers over Hen- 
ry's French dominions. The censures of the Church might 
be resisted in England. If Normandy, Anjou, and Aqui- 
taine were laid under interdict, these two spiritual conspir- 
ators had concluded that the king would be forced to sur- 
render. Becket was daily expecting a favorable answer, 
and meanwhile was protracting the time. He demanded 
guarantees. He did not suspect the king, he said, but he 
suspected his courtiers. John of Salisbury had cautioned 
him, and the pope had cautioned him, against so indecent a 
requisition. Lewis said it was unreasonable. Becket said 
then that he must have the kiss of peace as a sign that the 
king was really reconciled to him. He probably knew that 
the kiss would and must be withheld from him until he had 
given proofs that he meant in earnest to carry out his en- 
gagements. The king said coldly that he did not mean, and 
had never meant, to injure the Church. He was willing to 
leave the whole question between himself and the archbishop 
either to the peers and prelates of France or to the French 
universities. More he could not do. The conference at 
Montmartre ended, as Becket meant that it should end, in 
nothing. 

He sent off dispatches to the Archbishop of Sens and to 
his Roman agents, entirely well satisfied with himself, and 
bidding them tell the pope that Normandy had only to be 
laid under interdict, and that the field was won. Once 
more he had painfully to discover that he had been building 
on a quicksand. Instead of the interdict, the pope sent 



76 Life and Times of 

orders to the Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of 
Nevers to absolve a second time the victims whom he had 
excommunicated at Clairvaux. Instead of encouragement 
to go on and smite the king with the spiritual sword, he 
received a distinct command to abstain for another interval. 
Last of all, and worst of all, the pope informed him that at 
the king's request, for certain important purposes, he had 
granted a commission, as legate over all England, to his 
rival and enemy the Archbishop of York. The king's 
envoys had promised that the commission should not be 
handed to the Archbishop of York till the pope had been 
again consulted. But the deed was done. The letter had 
been signed and delivered.-^ The hair shirt and the five 
daily floggings had been in vain then ! Heaven was still 
inexorable. The archbishop raved like a madman. " Satan 
was set free for the destruction of the Church." " At Rome 
it was always the same. Barabbas was let go, and Christ 
was crucified." " Come what might, he would never sub- 
mit, but he would trouble the Roman Church no more." ^ 

1 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, pp. 249, 250. 

2 Becket to Cardinal Albert. Giles, vol. ii. p. 251. 



Thomas Bechet, 77 



CHAPTER Vni. 

Becket had now been for more than five years in exile. 
He had fought for victory with a tenacity which would 
have done him credit had his cause been less preposterous. 
At length it seemed that hope was finally gone. At the 
supreme moment another opportunity was thrust into his 
hands. Henry's health was uncertain ; he had once been 
dangerously ill. The succession to the English crown had 
not yet settled into fixed routine. Of the Conqueror's sons 
William had been preferred to Robert. Stephen sup- 
planted Matilda ; but the son of Stephen was set aside for 
Matilda's son. To prevent disputes it had been long de- 
cided that Prince Henry must be crowned and receive the 
homao;e of the barons while his father was still livincr. 

The pope in person had been invited to perform the cer- 
emony. The pope had found it impossible to go, and 
among the other inconveniences resultino- from Becket's 
absence the indefinite postponement of tliis coronation had 
not been the lightest. The king had been reluctant to in- 
vade the acknowledged privilege of the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, and put it oiF from year to year. But the country 
was growing imjoatient. The arclibishop's exile might now 
be indefinitely protracted. The delay was growing danger- 
ous, and the object of the commission for which the king 
had asked, and which the pope had granted to tlie Arch- 
bishop of York, was to enable the Archbishop of York to 
act in the coronation ceremony. The commission in its 
terms was all that Henry could desire ; the pope not only 
permitted the Archbishop of York to officiate, but enjoined 
him to do it. Promises were said to have been given that 



78 Life and Times of 

it was not to be used without the pope's consent; but in 
such a labyrinth of lies little reliance can be placed on state- 
ments unconfirmed by writing. The pope did not pretend 
that he had exacted from the English envoys any written 
engagement. He had himself signed a paper giving the 
Archbishop of York the necessary powers, and this paper 
was in the king's hands.-*- The coronation was the symbol 
of the struggle in which Becket was now engaged. The 
sovereign, according to his theory, was the delegate of the 
Church. In receiving the crown from the hands of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the sovereign formally admitted 
his dependent position ; and so long as it could be main- 
tained that the coronation would not hold unless it was per- 
formed either by the Archbishop of Canterbury or by the 
pope himself, the sovereign's subject state was a practical 
reality. 

Becket saw the favorable moment, and instantly snatched 
at it. He had many powerful friends in England among 
the peers and knights. The lay peers, he says in his let- 
ters, had always been truer to him than the clergy, they 
on their part ha-nng their own differences with the crown. 
Pie had ascertained that the coronation could not be post- 
poned ; and if he could make the validity of it to depend 
on his own presence, he might redeem his past mortifica- 
tions, and bring Henry to his feet after all. He knew Al- 
exander's nature and set his agents to work upon him. He 
told them to say that if the coronation was accomplished 
without his own presence the power of the Roman see in 
England was gone ; and thus, when all seemed lost, he 
gained the feeble and uncertain pope to his side once more. 
In keeping with his conduct throughout the whole Becket 
difficulty, Alexander did not revoke his previous letter. He 
left it standing as something to appeal to, as an evidence of 
his goodwill to Henry. But he issued another injunction to 

1 Giles, vol. ii. pp. 257, 258. The commission quoted by Giles is evi- 
dently the same as that to which the pope referred in his letter to Becket 



Thomas Becket. 79 

jhe Archbishop of York, strictly forbidding him to officiate ; 
and he inclosed the injunction to Becket to be used by him 
in whatever manner he might think fit. The Archbishop 
of York never received this letter. It was given, we are 
told, to the Bishop of Worcester, who was in Normandy, and 
was on the point of returning to England. The Bishop of 
Worcester was detained, and it did not reach its destination. 
So runs the story ; but the parts will not fit one another, 
and there is a mystery left unexplained.-^ This only is 
certain, that the inhibition was not served on the Arch- 
bishop of York. Rumor may have reached England that 
such a thing had been issued ; but the commission which had 
been formerly granted remained legally unrevoked, and on 
the 18th of June Prince Henry was crowned at West- 
minster in his father's presence by the Archbishop of York 
and the Bisho^DS of London, Durham, Rochester, and Salis- 
bury. 

It was easy now for Becket to represent to Alexander 
that the English bishops had rewarded his kindness to 
them by defying his positive injunctions. To the super- 
stitious English barons the existence of the inhibition threw 
a doubt on the legality of the coronation, and as men's 
minds then were, and with the wild lawless disposition of 
such lion cubs as the Plantagenet princes, a tainted title 
would too surely mean civil war. By ill-fortune offence 
was given at the same time to Lewis, who considered that 
his daughter should have been crowned with her husband, 
and he resented what he chose to regard as a wilful slight. 

1 It would appear from a letter of John of Salisbury that the prohibi- 
tory letter had been purposely withheld by Becket, who was allowing 
himself to be guided by some \(S\q xiaticinla or prophecies. John of Salis- 
bury writes to him (Letters, vol. ii. p. 236): "Memineritis quantum peri- 
culum et infortunium ad see traxerit mora porrigendi .... prohibito- 

rias Eboracensi archiepiscopo et episcopis transmarinis Subtilitatem 

>estram vaticinia quae non erant a Spiritu dehiscrunt Vaticiuiis 

ergo renunciemus in posterum, quia nos in hue parte gravius infortunia 
perculerunt." 



80 Life and Times of 

The pope was told that the coronation oath had been al- 
tered, that the liberties of the Church had been omitted, 
and that the young king had been sworn to maintain the 
Constitutions of Clarendon. Becket made the most of his 
opportunity ; mistakes, exaggerations, wilful lies, and cul- 
pable credulity did their work effectively ; Lewis went to 
war again, and invaded Normandy ; the pope, believing 
that he had been tricked and insulted, commanded Henry 
to make peace with the archbishop under threat of instant 
personal excommunication of himself and an interdict over 
his whole dominions. Henry flew back from England to 
Normandy. In a month he dispelled the illusions of Lewis, 
and restored peace. It was less easy to calm Alexander, 
who regarded himself, if not openly defied, yet as betrayed 
by the breach of the promise that the commission to the 
Archbishop of York should not be used without a fresh 
permission from himself. Henry knew that a sentence of 
excommunication against himself, and an interdict over his 
French dominions, was seriously possible. The risk was 
too great to be incurred without another effort to compose 
the weary quarrel. The archbishop, too, on his side had 
been taught by often repeated experience that the pope 
was a broken reed. Many times the battle seemed to have 
been won, and the pope's weakness or ill-will had snatched 
the victory from him. He had left England because he 
thought the continent a more promising field of battle for 
him. He began to think that final success, if he was ever 
to obtain it, would only be possible to him in his own see, 
among his own people, surrounded by his powerful friends. 
He too, on his side, was ready for a form of agreement 
which would allow him to return and repossess himself of 
the large revenues of which he had felt the want so terribly. 
More than once he and Henry met and separated without a 
conclusion. At length at Freteval in Vendome, on St. 
Mary Magdalen's day, July 22, an interview took place in 
the presence of Lewis and a vast assemblage of prelates 



Thomas Becket. 81 

and knights and nobles ; where, on the terms which had 
been arranged at Montmartre, the king and the archbishop 
consented to be reconciled. The kiss which before had 
been the difficulty was not offered by Henry and was not 
demanded by Becket ; but according to the account given 
by Herbert, who describes what he himself witnessed, and 
relates what Becket told him, after the main points were 
settled, the king and the archbishop rode apart out of hear- 
ing of every one but themselves. There the archbishop 
asked the king whether he might censure the bishops who 
had officiated at the 'coronation. The king, so the arch- 
bishop informed his friends, gave his full and free consent. 
The archbishop sprang from his horse in gratitude to the 
king's feet. The king alighted as hastily, and held the 
archbishop's stirrup as he remounted. These gestures the 
spectators saw and wondered at, unable, as Herbert says, 
to conjecture what was passing till it was afterwards ex- 
plained to them. 

That the king should have consented as absolutely and 
unconditionally as Becket said that he did, or even that he 
should have consented at all in Becket's sense of the word, 
to the excommunication of persons who had acted by his 
own orders and under a supposed authority from the pope, 
is so unlikely in itself, so inconsistent with Henry's conduct 
afterwards, that we may feel assured that Henry's account 
of what took place would, if we knew it, have been singu- 
larly different. But we are met with a further difficulty. 
Herbert says positively that the conversation between 
Becket and the king was private between themselves, that 
no one heard it or knew the subject of it except from 
Becket's report. Count Theobald of Blois asserted, in a 
letter to the pope, that in his presence (me prcesente) the 
archbishop complained of the conduct of the English prel- 
ates, and that the king empowered him to pass sentence on 
them. Yet more remarkably, the archbishop afterwards at 
Canterbury insisted to Reginald Fitzurse that the king's 
6 



82 Life and Times of 

promises to him had been given in the audience of 500 
peers, knights, and prelates, and that Sir Reginald him- 
self was among the audience. Fitzurse denied that he heard 
the king give any sanction to the punishment of the bish- 
ops. He treated Becket's declaration as absurd and incred- 
ible on the face of it. The Count of Blois may have 
confounded what he himself heard with what Becket told 
him afterwards, or he may have referred to some other 
occasion. The charge against the king rests substantially 
on Becket's own uncorrected word ; while, on the other 
side, are the internal unlikelihood of the permission in it- 
self and the inconsistency of Becket's subsequent action 
with a belief that he had the king's sanction for what he 
intended to do. Had he supposed that the king would ap- 
prove, he would have acted openly and at once. Instead 
of consulting the king, he had no sooner left the Freteval 
conference than he privately obtained from the pope letters 
of suspension against the Archbishop of York and the 
Bishop of Durham, and letters of excommunication against 
the Bishops of London, Salisbury, and Rochester ; and 
while he permitted Henry to believe that he was going 
home to govern his diocese in peace,-^ he had instruments 
in his portfolio which were to explode in lightning the mo- 
ment that he set foot in England, and convulse the country 
once more. 

1 " Archiepiscopus pacem mecum fecit ad voluntatem meam." 



Thomas Becket. 83 



CHAPTER IX. 

By the terms of tlie peace of Freteval, the archbishop 
fras to be restored to his estates and dignity. He on hia 
part had given assurances of his intentions with which 
Henry had professed himself satisfied. Private communi- 
cations had passed between him and the king, the nature of 
which is only known to us through the archbishop's repre- 
sentations to his friends. Tliat the reconciliation, however, 
was left incomplete, is evident both from Becket's conduct 
and from Henry's. The king had made the return of his 
favor conditional on Becket's conduct. Either he did not 
trust Becket's promises, or the promises were less ample 
than he desired. 

Immediately after the interview the king became danger- 
ously ill, and for a month he believed that he was dying. 
Becket returned to Sens, and sent messengers to England 
to young Henry announcing his approaching return, and 
requesting that his estates should be made over at once to 
his own people. The messengers were instructed privately 
to communicate with his English friends, and ascertain the 
state of public feeling. The young king named a day on 
which the trust should be made over to the archbishop's 
officials, and advised that the archbishop should remain for a 
while on the continent, and endeavor to recover his father's 
confidence. The messengers reported that he had many 
staunch supporters, the Earl of Cornwall among them ; but 
they were unanimously of opinion that it would be unwise 
for the archbishop to reappear at Canterbury so long as the 
old king's distrust continued. The peace of Freteval, there- 
fore, was obviously understood to have been inconclusive by 



84 Life and Times of 

all parties. The inconclusiveness was made still more ap- 
parent immediately after. 

At the beginning of September, Henry had partially re- 
covered. The archbishop sent John of Salisbury and Her- 
bert of Bosham to him to complain of the delay with the 
estates. He had been watched, perhaps, more closely than 
he was aware. The king knew nothing as yet of the in- 
tended excommunication of the bishops. But he knew 
Becket's character. He felt it more than probable that 
mischief was meditated. He said that he must wait to see 
how the archbishop conducted himself. 

Passionate as usual, the archbishop complained to the 
pope ; he intimated that only his holiness's orders pre- 
vented him from revenging his ill-treatment. Prudence, 
however, told him that if he was to make an effective use 
of the excommunications which the pope had trusted to him, 
he must for the present restrain himself. Twice again he 
saw the king at Tours, and afterwards at Amboise. Henry 
was reserved, but not unkind. The archbishop had pro- 
fessed a wish for peace. If his behavior after his return 
to England proved that he was in earnest in these profes- 
sions — if he remained quietly in his province, and made no 
further disturbances — the king said that he was prepared 
to show him every possible kindness. 

The king needed no more complete justification of his 
suspicions than an expression which Becket used in relating 
this conversation to his friend Herbert. " As the king was 
speaking," he said, " I thought of the words : * All these 
things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship 
me.' " It is evident on the face of the narrative that the 
king never gave the conscious sanction to violent measures 
against the bishops, which Becket pretended afterwards 
that he had received. In answer to his complaints at 
Amboise, Henry may have told him that the rights of the 
Bee of Canterbury should be assured, and that, if those 
rights had been impaired, satisfaction should be made to 



J 



Thomas Bechet. 85 

him. To this last conference, and to some such words as 
these, the Count of Blois may have referred in his letter to 
the pope. But Becket and his friends put a construction 
upon the promises which none knew better than they that 
Henry did not intend. It is as certain that Becket's own 
professions were no less equivocal — that when he spoke of 
peace he was thinking only of a peace of which he was" to 
dictate the terms, and that he had already determined to 
reopen the war on a new stage on the instant of his return 
to his cathedral. 

But the return was now determined on, be the conse- 
quences what they might. The English bishops had their 
friends among the cardinals. In the course of the autumn 
it became known in England that the archbishop had ap- 
plied for censures against the bishops, and that the pope 
had granted them. They advised the king to insist that 
Becket should bind himself by some more explicit engage- 
ments before he should be allowed to land, that he should 
be examined especially as to whether he had any letters of 
excommunication from Rome, and that if he were in pos- 
session of such letters he should surrender them. Henry 
preferred to trust to the archbishop's honor, or to the 
watchfulness of the wardens of the ports. He was weary 
of the struggle. Doubtless he had his misgivings, as the 
bishops had ; but he had made up his mind that the experi- 
ment should be tried, with, on his part at least, a faithful 
discharge of his own engagements. 

The archbishop had gone to Rouen in November to set- 
tle accounts with creditors who had advanced him money. 
He had meant to see Henry once more, but Henry wrote 
to say that the delay of his return had led to disquieting 
rumors which ousht not to continue. He desired the arch- 
bishop to go back to Canterbury at once ; and, that he 
might be subjected to no inconvenience on landing, he sent 
John of Oxford, whose person was well known, to accom- 
pany and protect him. John of Oxford's instructions were, 



86 Life and Times of 

after seeing Becket safe at Canterbury, to go on to the 
young king and give orders for the immediate restoration 
of the property of the see. 

The die was cast. The archbishop resolved to go. 
There was abundant disaifection in England. In the spring 
of this very year the king had been obliged to suspend the 
sheriffs in every county, and ultimately to remove many of 
them, for extortion and oppression.^ The clergy were 
lukewarm in his interests ; but there were better reasons 
for relying upon the nobles. The king had thrust a bridle 
in their mouths, restraining what they called their liberties, 
and many of them, as was afterwards proved, were ready 
to make common cause with the Church against the Crown. 
The archbishojD was perfectly right in exj^ecting to find 
among the laity a party who would stand by him. He 
went once more to Sens to take leave of his entertainers. 
After an affectionate parting with Lewis and the Queen of 
France, retaining still his old taste for magnificence, he 
rode down to the coast with an escort of a hundred cavaliers, 
and there once more, separated from him but by a few hours' 
sail, lay the white cliffs of England. 

It was thought likely, if it was not known for certain, 
that Becket would bring with him letters from the pope, 
and the introduction of such letters, if to the hurt of any 
English subject, was against the law, without a written 
license from the king. The duty of the wardens of the 
ports was to search the persons and the baggage of any one 
whom there was ground for suspecting, and on reaching the 
coast Becket learned that the three prelates who were to be 
excommunicated, the Sheriff of Kent, Sir Ranulf de Broc, 
and Sir Reginald de Warenne, one of the council of the 
young king, were waiting for him at Dover to ascertain 
whether he was the bearer of any such explosive missile. 
The future martyr was not select in his language. " Arch- 
devils," "priests of Baal," " standard-bearers of the Balaam- 

1 Benedict. 



Thomas BecJcet, 87 

ites," " children of perdition,'* were the common phrases 
with which he described the unfortunate bishops who were 
thus trying to escape their sentences. To outwit their vigi- 
lance, a day or two before he meant to sail, he sent over a 
boy in a small vessel whose insignificant appearance would 
attract no attention. The boy or nun (for there is reason 
to suppose that the bearer was a woman disguised) pre- 
sented himself suddenly before the Archbishop of York in 
St. Peter's Oratory at Dover, placed the letter of suspension 
in his hands, and disappeared before he had time to learn its 
contents. In the same hour, and by the same instrument, 
the still more terrible letters of excommunication were 
served on the Bishops of London and Salisbury. Their 
precautions had been baffled. The shots had been fired 
which opened the new campaign, and the mark had been 
successfully hit. Sir Ranulf de Broc searched the town 
with a drawn sword for the audacious messenger, but the 
messenger had vanished. 

It would have gone ill with Becket had he landed in the 
midst of the storm which the delivery of the letters instantly 
kindled. The ground of the censures was the coronation of 
the young king. To excommunicate the bishops who had 
officiated was to deny the young king's title to the crown. 
The archbishop had come back then, it seemed, to defy the 
government and light a civil war. The next morning, when 
he and his fiiends were examining the vessel in which they 
were about to embark, an English boat ran into the harbor. 
Some one leaped on shore, and, coming straight to Herbert, 
told him that if the archbishop went to Dover he was a dead 
man ; the excommunications had set the country on fire. 
A rapid council was held. Several of the priests were 
frightened. The certain displeasure of the king was ad- 
mitted with a frankness which showed how little Becket 
really supposed that Henry would approve what he had 
»ione. Becket asked Herbert for advice. Herbert, always 
the worst adviser that he could have consulted, said that 



88 Life and Times of 

they must advance or fall into disgrace. Let the archbishop 
go boldly forward, and he would tread the dragon under 
his feet. The worst that could befall him was a glorious 
martyrdom. 

Much of this fine language may have been an after- 
thought. The archbishop, when a choice of conduct lay 
before him, was certain to choose the most rash. He de- 
cided, however, to avoid Dover, and on the morning of the 
1st of December he sailed up the river to Sandwich, with 
his cross raised conspicuously above the figure-head of his 
shijj. Sandwich was his own town. The inhabitants were 
lieges of the see, and a vast and delighted crowd was gath- 
ered on the quay to receive him. The change of destination 
was known at Dover Castle. Sir Reginald de Warenne, 
the Sheriff of Kent, and Ranulf de Broc, had ridden across, 
and had arrived at Sandwich before the archbishop landed. 
John of Oxford hurried to them with the king's orders that 
the archbishop was to be received in peace. They advanced 
in consequence without their arms, and inquired the mean- 
ing of the excommunication of the bishops. To their 
extreme surprise, they were told that the letters had been 
issued with the king's knowledge and permission. To so 
bold an assertion no immediate answer was possible. They 
pointed to his train, among whom were some French clergy. 
Strangers coming into England without a passport were 
required to swear allegiance for the time of their stay. 
The sheriiF said that the priests must take the usual oaths. 
Becket scornfully answered that no clerk in his company 
should take any oath at all. He declined further conversa- 
tion, and bade them come to him after two days to the pal- 
ace of Canterbury if they had more to say. 

Becket passed the remainder of the day at Sandwich. 
The next morning he set out for his cathedral. Seven 
years he had been absent, and for all those years his name 
had been a household word in castle and parsonage, grange 
and cabin. In England people sympathize instinctively 



Thomas Bechet. 89 

nrith every one who opposes the Crown, and between Sand- 
wich and Canterbury Becket was among his own tenants, to 
whom he had been a gentler master than Ranulf de Broc. 
The short winter day's ride was one long triumphal proces- 
sion. Old men, women, and children lined the roads on their 
knees to beg his blessing. Clergy came at the head of their 
parishioners with garlands and banners. Boys chanted 
hymns. Slowly at a foot's pace the archbishoj) made his 
way among the delighted multitudes. It w^as evening before^ 
he reached Canterbury. He went direct to the cathedral. 
His face shone as he entered, " like the face of Moses when 
he descended from the mount." He seated himself on his 
throne, and the monks came one by one and kissed him. 
Tears were in all eyes. " My lord," Herbert whispered to 
Him, " it matters not now when you depart hence. Christ 
has conquered. Christ is now king." " He looked at me.'* 
says Herbert, " but he did not speak." 

Strangely in that distant century, where the general his- 
tory is but outline, and the colors are dim, and the lights 
and shadows fall where modern imagination chooses to 
throw them, and the great men and women who figured on 
the world's stage are, for the most part, only names, the 
story of Becket, in these last days of it especially, stands out 
as in some indelible photograph, every minutest feature of 
it as distinct as if it were present to our eyes. We have the 
terrible drama before us in all its details. We see the actors, 
we hear their very words, we catch the tones of their voices, 
we perceive their motives; we observe them from day to 
day, and hour to hour ; we comprehend and sympathize 
with the passions through the fierce collision of which the 
action was worked out to its catastrophe. The importance 
pf the questions which were at issue, the characters of the 
chief performers, and the intense interest witli which {hey 
were watched by the spectators, raise the biographies and 
etters in which the story is preserved to a level of literary 
excellence far beyond what is to be found in all contempo- 
rary writings. 



90 lAfe and Times of 

The archbishop slept in his desolate palace. No prepara- 
tions had been made for him. The stores had not been 
laid in. The barns and byres were empty. Ranulf de Broc 
had swept up the last harvest, and had left tlie lands bare. 
In the morning (December o) de Wareune and the sheriff 
reappeared with the chaplains of the three bishops. They 
had been led to hope, they said, that the archbishop would 
come home in peace. Instead of peace he had brought a 
tword. By scattering excommunications without notice, he 
was introducing confusion into every department of the 
realm. The very crown was made dependent on the arch- 
bishop's will. The law of England was reduced to the arch- 
bishop's edicts. Such a assumption could not and would not 
be allowed. The excommunication of the bishops was a 
direct blow at the authority of the young king. For the 
archbishop's own sake they advised him, and in the king's 
name they commanded him, to take the censures off, or a 
time might come when he would regret his violence too late 
to repair it. 

Until the issue of the sentences against the three bisliops, 
Alexander had not committed himself to any positive act in 
Becket's favor, and it had been to compromise the papacy 
distinctly in the quarrel that the pope's letters had been 
thus immediately discharged. Recket answered that the 
excommunications had been issued by the supreme pontiff, 
and that he could not undo the work of his superior. He 
admitted, with exasperating satire, that he was not dis- 
pleased to see his holiness defend the Church with his own 
hands. To punish men who had broken the law was not 
to show contempt of the king. He had himself complained 
to the king of the bishops' conduct, and the king had prom- 
ised that he should have satisfaction. For the rest he ac- 
knowledged no right in the king or any man to challenge 
his conduct. He bore the spiritual sword, and did not mean 
to vshrink from drawing it against sinners, whatever might 
De the inconvenience. If the bishops would take an oath to 



Thomas Bechet. 91 

lubmit to any sentence which the pope might pass upon 
them, he would strain a point and absolve them ; without 
such an oath, never. 

The answer was carried to Dover. Folio t and the Bishop ot 
Salisbury were willing, it was said, to have sworn as Becket 
prescribed. The archbishop declared that he would spend 
the last farthing that he possessed rather than yield to such 
insolence. The young king was at Winchester.^ De Wa- 
renne hastened to him to report Becket's behavior, and 
probably to ask instructions as to what the bishops should 
do. They crossed eventually to the old king's court in 
Normandy, but not till after a delay of more than a fort- 
night at Dover. Obviously the conduct which they were 
to pursue was carefully canvassed and deliberately resolved 
upon. Becket himself, too, found it prudent to offer ex- 
planations, and send the Prior of Dover after De TYarenne 
to Winchester to report the archbishop's arrival, and to ask 
permission for him to present himself From the rapidity 
with which events now passed, the prior must have ridden 
night and day. Young Henry being still under age, the 
archbishop's messenger was received by his guardians, whom 
he found in towering indignation. The excommunication 
was regarded as an invitation to rebellion, and had Henry 
died in August there undoubtedly would have been rebellion. 
" Does the archbishop mean to make pagans of us, with his 
suspensions and curses?" they said; "does he intend to 
upset the throne ? " The prior asked to be allowed to see 
the young king himself. He assured them that the arch- 
bishop had meant no injury to him. No one in the realm 
besides his father loved the prince more dearlj'. The dis- 
pleasure was only that other hands than those of the primate 
had placed the crown upon his head. He repeated the 
Btory that the old king knew what was to be done to the 
bishops. He trusted that the youjig king would not refuse 
lo receive a person who only desired to do him loyal service. 

1 Not Woodstock, as is generally said. William of Canterbury, with 
special reference to localities, says Wintoiiia. 



92 Life and Times of 

The court was evidently perplexed by the confident as- 
sertions with respect to Henry. The Earl of Cornwall 
advised that Becket should be allowed to come ; they could 
hear from himself an explanation of the mystery. Geoifrey 
Ridel, the Archdeacon of Salisbury, happened, however, to 
be present. Ridel was one of Henry the Second's most 
confidential advisers, whom Becket had cursed at Vezelay 
and habitually spoke of as an archdevil. He had been inti- 
mately acquainted with the whole details of the quarrel from 
its commencement, and was able to affirm positively that 
things were not as Becket represented. He recommended 
the guardians to consult the king before the archbishop was 
admitted ; and the Prior of Dover was, in consequence, dis- 
missed without an answer. 

The archbishop had committed himself so deeply that he 
could not afford to wait. Hi's hope was to carry the coun- 
try with him before the king could interfere, or at least to 
have formed a party too strong to be roughly dealt with. 
The Prior of Dover not having brought back a positive 
prohibition, he left Canterbury professedly to go himself to 
Winchester : but he chose to take London in his way ; it 
was easy to say that he had been long absent ; that his flock 
required his presence ; that there were children to be con- 
firmed, candidates for the priesthood to be ordained — holy 
rites of all kinds, too long neglected, to be attended to. 
There was no difficulty in finding an excuse for a circuit 
through the province ; and the archiepiscopal visitation as- 
sumed the form of a military parade. Few as the days had 
been since he had set his foot on the English shore, he had 
contrived to gather about him a knot of laymen of high 
birth and station. Quidam illustres, certain persons of dis- 
tinction, attended him with their armed retainers, and, sur- 
rounded by a steel-clad retinue with glancing morions and 
bristling lances, the archbishop set out for London a week 
after his return from the Continent. Rochester lay in his 
^ay. Rochester Castle was one of the strongholds which 



Thomas BeckeU 93 

he had challenged for his own. The gates of the castle re- 
mained closed against him, but the townsmen received him 
as their liege lord. As he approached Southwark the cit- 
izens poured out to greet the illustrious Churchman who 
had dared to defy his sovereign. A vast procession of three 
thoxisand clergy and scholars formed on the road, and went 
before him chanting a Te Deum ; and this passionate dis- 
play had a deliberate and dangerous meaning which every 
one who took part in it understood. To the anxious eyes 
of the court it was a first step in treason, and in the midst 
of the shouts of the crowd a voice was distinguished, saying, 
" Archbishop, 'ware the knife ! " 

It was on December 13 that Becket reached London 
Bridge. He slept that night close by, at the palace of 
the old Bishop of Winchester. His movements had been 
watched. The next morning Sir Jocelyn of Arundel and 
another knight waited on him with an order from the court 
at Winchester to return instantly to Canterbury, and to 
move no more about the realm with armed men. The arch- 
bishop had not ventured so far to be frightened at the first 
hard word. He received Sir Jocelyn as a king might re- 
ceive a rebel feudatory. With lofty fierceness he said he 
would go back at no man's bidding if Christmas had not 
been so near, when he desired to be in his cathedral.^ " May 
I not visit my diocese ? " he demanded. " Will the king 
drive off the shepherd that the wolf may tear the flock ? 
Let God see to it ! " Arundel said that he had come to 
deliver the king's commands, not to dispute about them. 
" Carry back, then, my commands to your king," said the 
archbishop.^ " Your commands ! " Arundel retorted ; " ad- 
dress your commands to those of your own order." Turn- 
ing sternly to the young lords in the archbishop's suite, 

1 " Spiritu fervens respondit se nuUatenus propter inhibitionem banc 
regressunini, nisi quia tunc jam festus tarn solemnis urgebat dies quo ec- 
tlesiae suae abesse noluit." 

* "Si et mandata mea regi vestro renunciaturi estis." —William of 
Canterbury. 



94 Life and Times of ' 

Qe bade them remember their duties, and rode off with his 
companion. 

To obey was to lose the game. Instead of obeying, 
the archbishop went on to Harrow, a benefice of his own 
into which an incumbent had been intruded by the Crown. 
From Harrow he sent for the old Abbot of St. Albans, and 
dispatched him to Winchester with a list of complaints. 
At the same time, and to learn the strength of the party at 
court which he supposed to be ready to stand by him, he 
sent a monk — apparently William of Canterbury, who tells 
the story — on a secret and dangerous mission to the Earl 
of Cornwall. The monk went disguised as a physician, 
Becket bidding him write word how things were going. 
The words in which he gave the order show his intention 
beyond possibility of question. The pretended physician 
was to go velut alter Cushy, and Cushy was the messenger 
who brought word to David that the Lord had avenged 
him of his enemies, and that the young king Absalom was 
dead.^ 

The Earl of Cornwall was well-disposed to Becket, but 
was true to his king and his country. When the rebellion 
actually broke out, three years after, the Earl of Cornwall's 
loyalty saved Henry's crown. He was willing to befriend 
the archbishop within the limits of law, but not to the 
extent upon which Becket counted. He received the dis- 
guised monk into his household ; he examined him closely 
as to the archbishop's intentions. He would perhaps have 
allowed him to remain, but a servant of the young king 
recognized the man through his assumed character as one 
of Becket's immediate followers, two days after his arrival. 
The earl bade him begone on the instant, and tell his mas- 
ter to look to himself; his life was in peril. 

The Abbot of St. Albans had travelled more slowl;^ 
The discovery was a bad preparation for his reception. 
Sir Jocelyn of Arundel had brought back Becket's insolent 
1 2 Samuel xviii. 31. 



Thomas Becket. 95 

answer, and the open disobedience of the order to return to 
Canterbury could be construed only as defiance. To the 
alarmed guardians it seemed as if an insurrection might 
break out at any moment. The abbot found the court at 
Breamore, near Fordingbridge, in Hampshire. He was 
admitted, and he presented his schedule of wrongs, which, 
after all, was trifling. The archbishop's clergy were forbid- 
den to leave the realm. He had been promised restitution 
of his property, but it had been given back to him in ruins. 
His game had been destroyed; his woods had been cut 
down ; his benefices were detained from him. As a last 
outrage, since his return Sir Eanulf de Broc had seized a 
cargo of wine which he had brought over with the old 
king's permission. The vessel in which it had arrived had 
been scuttled, and the crew had been incarcerated. God 
was injured when his clergy were injured, the abbot said, 
and in Becket's name he demanded redress. 

The abbot had spoken firmly, but in language and man- 
ner he had at least recognized that he was a subject address- 
ing his sovereign. A priest in his train, with Becket's own 
temper in him, thundered out as the abbot had ended: 
" Thus saith the Lord Primate, ' Let man so think of us as 
ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. 
If justice be not done as right demands, ye need not doubt 
that we will do our part and use the powers which God has 
committed to us.' " The fierce message was delivered 
amidst scowling groups of knights and nobles. Hot youths 
clenched their fists and clutched their dagger-hilts. A 
courtier told the bold priest that, but for the honor of the 
king's presence, he should suffer for his insolence. Sir 
Reginald de Warenne, who was present, said, " The bows 
are bent on both sides." The Earl of Cornwall, fresh from 
his conference with Becket's secret messenger, muttered, 
" Ere Lent there will be wild work in England." 

The archbishop was still at Harrow when the abbot came 
oack with an account of his reception. Many things the 



96 Life and Times of 

abbot must have been able to tell him which have been left 
unrecorded. Thus much, at any rate, must have been made 
plain — that the archbishop could not count on any imme- 
diate armed intervention. For the moment, at least, he 
would be left to face alone the storm which he had raised. 
The best that he could now hope to effect would be to bury 
himself and his enemies in common ruin. He foretold his 
fate to the abbot, and, resisting entreaties to spend Christ- 
mas at St. Albans, went back to Canterbury, where he had 
still work before him which could be accomplished only in 
his own cathedral. 



Thomas BecJcet. 97 



CHAPTER X. 

The story now turns to Henry's court in Normandy. 
Between Soutliampton and the Norman coast communica- 
tions were easy and rapid ; and the account of the arrival 
of the censured bishops, with the indignant words which 
burst from the king at the unwelcome news which he heard 
from them for the first time, is an imperfect legend in 
which the transactions of many days must have been epit- 
omized. 

The bishops did not leave England till the 20th or 21st 
of December,^ and before their appearance the king must 
have heard already not only of the excommunications and 
of the daring misuse of his own name, but of the armed 
progress to Loudon, of the remarkable demonstration there, 
of the archbishop's defiance of the government, of the mis- 
sion of the Abbot of St. Albans, of the threats of the priest, 
and of the imminent danger of a general rebellion. Dur- 
ing the first three weeks of this December many an anxious 
council must have been held in the Norman court, and many 
a scheme talked over and rejected for dealing with this im- 
practicable firebrand. What could be done with him ? No 
remedy was now available but a violent one. The law 
could not restrain a man who claimed to be superior to law 
and whose claims the nation was not prepared directly to 
deny. Three centuries later the solution would have been 
a formal trial, with the block and axe as the sequel of a 
judicial sentence. Ecclesiastical pretensions were still for- 
midable under Tudors, but the State had acquired strength 

1 Herbert says that they arrived at Bayeux paucis diebus ante natalem 
Domini. 

7 



98 Life and Times of 

to control them. In our own day the phantom has been 
exorcised altogether, and an archbishop who used Becket's 
language would be consigned to an asylum. In Becket's 
own time neither of these methods was possible. Becket 
himself could neither be borne with, consistently with the 
existence of the civil government, nor resisted save at the 
risk of censures which even the king scarcely dared to en- 
counter. A bishop might have committed the seven deadly 
sins, but his word was still a spell which could close the 
gates of heaven. The allegiance of the people could not be 
depended upon for a day if Becket chose to declare the 
king excommunicated, unless the pope should interfere ; 
and the pope was an inadequate resource in a struggle for 
the supremacy of the Church over the State. It was not 
until secular governments could look popes and bishops in 
the face, and bid them curse till they were tired, that the 
relations of Church and State admitted of legal definition. 
Till that time should arrive the ecclesiastical theory was 
only made tolerable by submitting to the checks of tacit 
compromise and practical good sense. 

Necessities for compromises of this kind exist at all 
times. In the most finished constitutions powers are as- 
signed to the different branches of the State which it would 
be inconvenient or impossible to remove, yet which would 
cause an immediate catastroj)he if the theory were made 
the measure of practice. The Crown retains a prerogative 
at present which would be fatal to it if strained. Par- 
liament would make itself intolerable if it asserted the 
entire privileges which it legally possesses. The clergy in 
the twelfth century were allowed and believed to be minis- 
ters of God in a sense in which neither Crown nor baron 
dared appropriate the name to themselves. None the less 
the clergy could not be allowed to reduce Crown and barons 
into entire submission to themselves. If either churchman 
or king broke the tacit bargain of mutual moderation which 
enabled them to work together harmoniously, the relations 



Thomas Bechet. 99 

between the two orders mio;ht not admit of more satisfac- 
tory theoretic adjustment ; but there remained the resource 
to put out of the way the disturber of the peace. 

Fuel ready to kindle was lying dry throughout Henry's 
dominions. If Becket was to be allowed to scatter excom- 
munications at his own pleasure, to travel through the 
country attended by knights in arms, and surrounded by 
adoring fools who regarded him as a supernatural being, it 
was easy to foresee the immediate future of England and 
of half France. To persons, too, who knew the archbishop 
as well as Henry's court knew him, the character of the 
man himself who was causing so much anxiety must have 
been peculiarly irritating. Had Becket been an Anselm, 
he might have been credited with a desire to promote the 
interests of the Church, not for power's sake, but for the 
sake of those spiritual and moral influences which the 
Catholic Church was still able to exert, at least in some 
happy instances. But no such high ambition was to be 
traced either in Becket's agitation or in Becket's own dis- 
position. He was still the self-willed, violent, unscrupulous 
chancellor, with the dress of the saint upon him, but not 
the nature. His cause was not the mission of the Church 
to purify and elevate mankind, but the privilege of the 
Church to control the civil government, and to dictate the 
law in virtue of magical powers which we now know to 
have been a dream and a delusion. His personal religion 
was not the religion of a regenerated heart, but a religion 
of self-torturing asceticism, a religion of the scourge and the 
hair shirt, a religion in which the evidences of grace were 
to be traced not in humbleness and truth, but in the worms 
and maggots which crawled about his body. He was the 
impersonation, not of what was highest and best in the 
Catholic Church, but of what was falsest and worst. The 
fear which he inspired was not the reverence willingly 
offered to a superior nature, but a superstitious terror like 
that felt for witches and enchanters, which brave men at 
Uie call of a higher duty could dare to defy. 



100 Life and Times of 

No one knows what passed at Bayeux during the first 
weeks of that December. King and council, knights and 
nobles, squires and valets must have talked of little else 
but Becket and his doings. The pages at Winchester laid 
their hands on their dagger-hilts when the priest delivered 
his haughty message. The peers and gentlemen who sur- 
rounded Henry at Bayeux are not likely to have felt more 
gently as each day brought news from England of some 
fresh audacity. At length a few days before Christmas, the 
three bishops arrived. Two were under the curse, and 
could not be admitted into the king's presence. The Arch- 
bishop of York, being only suspended, carried less contami- 
nation with him. At a council the archbishop was intro- 
duced, and produced Alexander's letters. From these it 
appeared not only that he and the other bishops were de- 
nounced by name, but that every person who had taken any 
part in the young king's coronation was by implication ex- 
communicated also. It is to be remembered that the king 
had received a positive sanction for the coronation from 
Alexander ; that neither he nor the bishops had received 
the prohibition till the ceremony was over ; and that the pro- 
hibitory letter, which it is at least possible that the king 
would have respected, had been kept back by Becket himself. 
The Archbishop of York still advised forbearance, and 
an appeal once more to Rome. The pope would see at 
last what Becket really was, and would relieve the country 
of him. But an appeal to Rome would take time, and 
England meanwhile might be in flames. " By God's eyes," 
said the king, " if all are excommunicated who were con- 
cerned in the coronation, I am excommunicated also." 
Some one (the name of the speaker is not mentioned) said 
that there would be no peace while Becket lived. With 
the fierce impatience of a man bafiied by a problem which 
he has done his best to solve, and has failed through no 
fault of his own, Henry is reported to have exclaimed: "Is 
his varlet that I loaded with kindness, that came first to 



Thomas Becket. 101 

court to me on a lame mule, to insult me and my children, 
and take my crown from me ? What cowards have I about 
me, that no one will deliver me from this lowborn priest ! " 
It is very likely that Henry used such words. The greatest 
prince that ever sat on throne, if tried as Henry had been, 
would have said the same ; and Henry had used almost the 
same language to the bishops at Chinon in 1166. But it is 
evident that much is still untold. These passionate denun- 
ciations can be no more than the outcome of lono^ and in- 
eifectual deliberation. Projects must have been talked 
over and rejected ; orders were certainly conceived which 
were to be sent to the archbishop, and measures were de- 
vised for dealing with him short of his death. He was to 
be required to absolve the censured bishops. If he refused, 
he might be sent in custody to the young king, he might be 
brought to Normandy, he might be exiled from the English 
dominions, or he might be imprisoned in some English 
castle. Indications can be traced of all these plans; and 
something of the kind would probably have been resolved 
upon, although it must have been painfully clear also that, 
without the pope's help, none of them would really meet 
the difficulty. But the result was that the knights about 
the court, seeing the king's perplexity, determined to take 
the risk on themselves, and deliver both him and their 
country. If the king acted, the king might be excommuni- 
cated, and the empire might be laid under interdict, with 
the consequences which every one foresaw. For their own 
acts the penalty would but fall upon themselves. They did 
not know, perhaps, distinctly what they meant to do, but 
something might have to be done which the king must con- 
demn if they proposed it to him. 

But being done unknown, 
He would have found it afterwards well done. 

Impetuous loyalty to the sovereign was in the spirit of 
the age. 



102 Life and Times of 

Among the gentlemen about his person whom Henry 
had intended to employ, could he have resolved upon the 
instructions which were to be given to them, were four 
knights of high birth and large estate — Sir Reginald Fitz- 
urse, of Somersetshire, a tenant in chief of the Crown, whom 
Becket himself had originally introduced into the court ; Sir 
Hugh de Morville, custodian of Knaresborough Castle, and 
justiciary of Northumberland ; Sir William de Tracy, half 
a Saxon, with royal blood in him ; and Sir Richard le 
Breton, who had been moved to volunteer in the service by 
another instance of Becket's dangerous meddling. Le Bre- 
ton was a friend of the king's brother William, whom the 
archbishop had separated from the lady to whom he was 
about to be married, on some plea of consanguinity. Sir 
William de Mandeville and others were to have been joined 
in the commission. But these four chose to anticipate both 
their companions and their final orders, and started alone.-^ 
Their disappearance was observed. An express was sent 
to recall them, and the king supposed that they had re- 
turned. But they had gone by separate routes to separate 
ports. The weather was fair for the season of the year, 
with an east wind perhaps ; and each had found a vessel 
without difficulty to carry him across the Channel. The 
rendezvous was Sir Ranulf de Broc's castle of Saltwood, 
near Hythe, thirteen miles from Canterbury. 

The archbishop meanwhile had returned from his adven- 
turous expedition. The young king and his advisers had 
determined to leave him no fair cause of complaint, and had 
sent orders for the restoration of his wine and the release 
of the captured seamen ; but the archbishop would not wait 

1 Mandeville came afterwards to Canterbury, and being asked what he 
had been prepared to do if he had found the archbishop alive, he said 
'Hhat he would have taken the archbishop sharply to task for his attacks 
upon his sovereign : if the archbishop had been reasonable, there would 
have been peace; if he had persisted in his obstinacy and presumption, 
beyond doubt he would have been compelled to yield." Mandeville, indis- 
putably, had direct instructions from the king. — Materials, vol. i. p. 126. 



Thomas BecJcet. 103 

for the State to do him justice. On Christmas Eve he was 
further exasperated by the appearance at the gate of his 
palace of one of his sumpter mules, which had been brutally 
mutilated by Sir Ranulf de Broc's kinsman Robert. " The 
viper's brood," as Herbert de Bosham said, " were lifting up 
their heads. The hornets were out. Bulls of Bashan com- 
passed the archbishop round about." The Earl of Corn- 
wall's warning had reached him, but " fight, not flight," was 
alone in his thoughts. He, too, was probably weary of the 
strife, and may have felt that he would serve his cause 
more effectually by death than by life. On Christmas day 
he preached in the cathedral on the text " Peace to men of 
good will." There was no peace, he said, except to men 
of good will. He spoke passionately of the trials of the 
Church. As he drew towards an end he alluded to the pos- 
sibility of his own martyrdom. He could scarcely articu- 
late for tears. The congregation were sobbing round him. 
Suddenly his face altered, his tone changed. Glowing with 
anger, with the fatal candles in front of him, and in a voice 
of thunder, the solemn and the absurd strangely blended in 
the overwhelming sense of his own wrongs, he cursed the 
intruders into his churches; he cursed Sir Ranulf de Broc; 
he cursed Robert de Broc for cutting off his mule's tail ; 
he cursed by name several of the old king's most intimate 
councillors who were at the court in Normandy. At each 
fierce imprecation he quenched a light, and dashed down 
a candle. "As he spoke," says the enthusiastic Herbert, 
"you saw the very beast of the prophet's vision, with the 
face of a lion and the face of a man." He had drawn the 
spiritual sword, as he had sworn that he would. So expe- 
rienced a man of the world could not have failed to foresee 
that he was provoking passions which would no longer 
respect his office, and that no rising in England would 
now be in time to save him. He was in better spirits, it 
was observed, after he had discharged his anathema. The 
Christmas festival was held in the hall. Asceticism was a 



104 Life and Times of 

virtue which was never easy to him. He indulged his natu- 
ral inclinations at all permitted times, and on this occasion 
he ate and drank more copiously than usual. 

The next day Becket received another warning that he 
was in personal danger. He needed no friends to tell him 
that. The only attention which he paid to these messages 
was to send his secretary Herbert and his crossbearer Alex- 
ander Llewellyn to France, to report his situation to Lewis 
and to the Archbishop of Sens.^ He told Herbert at part- 
ing that he would see his face no more. 

So passed at Canterbury Saturday, Sunday, and Mon- 
day, the 26th, 27th, and 28th of December. On that same 
Monday afternoon the four knights arrived at Saltwood. 
They were expected, for Sir Ranulf with a party of men- 
at-arms had gone to meet them. There on their arrival 
they learned the fresh excommunications which had been 
pronounced against their host and against their friends at 
the court. The news could only have confirmed whatever 
resolutions they had formed. 

On the morning of the 29th they rode with an escort of 
horse along the old Roman road to Canterbury. They 
halted at St. Augustine's Monastery, where they were en- 
tertained by the abbot elect, Becket's old enemy, the scan- 
dalous Clarembald. They perhaps dined there. At any 
rate they issued a proclamation bidding the inhabitants re- 
main quiet in their houses, in the king's name, and then, 
with some of Clarembald's armed servants in addition to 
their own party, they went on to the great gate of the 
archbishop's palace. Leaving their men outside, the four 
knights alighted and entered the court. They unbuckled 
their swords, leaving them at the lodge, and, throwing 
gowns over their armor, they strode across to the door of the 
hall. Their appearance could hardly have been unexpected. 

1 One of his complaints, presented by the Abbot of St. Albans, had been 
that his clergy were not allowed to leave the realm. There seems to have 
been no practical difficulty. 



Thomas Bechet. 105 

ft was now between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. 
They had been some time in the town, and their arrival 
could not fail to have been reported. The archbishop's 
midday meal was over. The servants were dining on the 
remains, and the usual company of mendicants were waiting 
for their turn. The archbishop had been again disturbed at 
daybreak by intimation of danger. He had advised any of 
his clergy who were afraid to escape to Sandwich ; but none 
of them had left him. He had heard mass as usual. He 
had received his customary floggings. At dinner he had 
drunk freely, observing, when some one remarked upon it, 
that he that had blood to lose needed wine to support him. 
Afterwards he had retired into an inner room with John of 
Salisbury, his chaplain Fitzstephen, Edward Grim of Cam- 
bridge, who was on a visit to him, and several others, and 
was now sitting in conversation with them in the declining 
light of the winter afternoon till the bell should ring for 
vespers. 

The knights were recognized, when they entered the hall, 
as belonging to the king's court. The steward invited them 
to eat. They declined, and desired him to inform the arch- 
bishop that they had arrived with a message from the Court. 
This was the first communication which the archbishop had 
received from Henry since he had used his name so freely 
to cover acts which, could Henry have anticipated them, 
would have barred his return to Canterbury forever. The 
insincere professions of peace had covered an intention of 
provoking a rebellion. The truth was now plain. There 
was no room any more for excuse or palliation. What 
course had the king determined on ? 

The knights were introduced. They advanced. The 
archbishop neither spoke nor looked at them, but continued 
talking to a monk who was next him. He himself was 
sitting on a bed. The rest of the party present were on the 
floor. The knights seated themselves in the same manner, 
and for a few moments there was silence. Then Becket's 



106 Life and Times of 

black, restless eye glanced from one to the other. He 
slightly noticed Tracy ; and Fitzurse said a few unrecorded 
sentences to him, which ended with " God help you ! " To 
Becket's friends the words sounded like insolence. They 
may have meant no more than pity for the deliberate fool 
who was forcing destruction upon himself. 

Becket's face flushed. Fitzurse went on : " We bring 
you the commands of the king beyond the sea ; will you 
hear us in public or in private?" Becket said he cared not. 
" In private, then," said Fitzurse. The monks thought 
afterwards that Fitzurse had meant to kill the archbishop 
where he sat. If the knights had entered the palace, 
thronged as it was with men, with any such intention, they 
would scarcely have left their swords behind them. The 
room was cleared, and a short altercation followed, of which 
nothing is known save that it ended speedily in high words 
on both sides. Becket called in his clergy again, his lay 
servants being excluded,-^ and bade Fitzurse go on. " Be it 
so," Sir Reginald said. " Listen then to what the king says. 
When the peace was made, he put aside all his complaints 
against you. He allowed you to return, as you desired, 
free to your see. You have now added contempt to your 
other offences. You have broken the treaty. You have 
allowed your pride to tempt you to defy your lord and mas- 
ter to your own sorrow. You have censured the bishops 
by whose administration the prince was crowned. You 
have pronounced an anathema against the king's ministers, 
by whose advice he is guided in the management of the 
Empire. You have made it plain that if you could you 
would take the prince's crown from him. Your plots and 
contrivances to attain your ends are notorious to all men. 
Say, then, will you attend us to the king's presence, and 
there answer for yourself? For this we are sent." 

The archbishop declared that he had never wished any 
\aurt to the prince. The king had no occasion to be dis- 
1 " Laicis omnibus exclusis. " 



Thomas Becket. 107 

pleased if crowds came about him in the towns and cities 
after having been so long deprived of his presence. If he 
had done any wrong he would make satisfaction, but he 
protested against being suspected of intentions which had 
never entered his mind. 

Fitzurse did not enter into an altercation with him, but 
continued : " The king commands further that you and your 
clerks repair without delay to the young king's presence, 
and swear allegiance, and promise to amend your faults." 

The archbisliop's temper was fast rising. " I will do 
whatever may be reasonable," he said, " but I tell you 
plainly the king shall have no oaths from me, nor from 
any one of my clergy. There has been too much perjury 
already. I have absolved many, with God's help, who had 
perjured themselves. ■'■ I will absolve the rest when He 
permits. 

" I understand you to say that you will not obey," said 
Fitzurse ; and went on in the same tone : " The king com- 
mands you to absolve the bishops whom you have excom- 
municated without his permission {absque licentid sua)." 

" The pope sentenced the bishops," the archbishop said. 
" If you are not pleased, you must go to him. The affair is 
none of mine." 

Fitzurse said it had been done at his instigation, which 
he did not deny ; but he proceeded to reassert that the king 
had given him permission. He had complained at the time 
of the peace of the injury which he had suffered in the 
coronation, and the king had told him that he might obtain 
from the pope any satisfaction for which he liked to ask. 

If this was all the consent which the king had given, the 
pretence of his authority was inexcusable. Fitzurse could 
scarce hear the archbishop out with patience. " Ay, ay ! " 
said he ; " will you make the king out to be a traitor, then ? 
The king gave you leave to excommunicate the bishops 

1 He was alluding to the bishops who had sworn to the Constitutions of 
Clarendon. 



108 Life and Times of 

when they were acting by his own order ! It is more than 
we can bear to listen to such monstrous accusations." 

John of Salisbury tried to check the archbishop's impru- 
dent tongue, and whispered to him to sj^eak to the knights 
in private: but when the passion was on him, no mule was 
more ungovernable than Becket. Drawing to a conclusion, 
Fitzurse said to him : " Since you refuse to do any one of 
those things which the king requires of you, his final com- 
mands are that you and your clergy shall forthwith depart 
out of this realm and out of his dominions, never more to 
return.-'- You have broken the peace and the king cannot 
trust you again." 

Becket answered wildly that he would not go — never 
again would he leave England. Nothing but death should 
now part him from his church. Stung by the reproach of 
ill-faith, he poured out the catalogue of his own injuries. 
He had been promised restoration, and instead of restora- 
tion he had been robbed and insulted. Ranulf de Broc had 
laid an embargo on his wine. Robert de Broc had cut off 
his mule's tail, and now the knights had come to menace 
him. 

De Morville said that if he had suffered any wrong he 
had only to appeal to the council, and justice would be 
done. 

Becket did not wish for the council's justice. " I have 
complained enough," he said ; " so many wrongs are daily 
heaped upon me that I could not find messengers to carry 
the tale of them. I am refused access to the court. Nei- 
ther one king nor the other will do me right. I will endure 
it no more. I will use my own powers as archbishop, and 
no child of man shall prevent me." 

1 " Hoc est prseceptum regis, ut de regno et terra quae ipsius subjacet 
imperio cum tuis omnibus egrediaris ; neque enim pax erit tibi vel tuorura 
cuiquam ab hac die, quia pacem violasti." These remarkable -words are 
given by Grim, who heard them spoken. After the deliberate fraud of 
which Becket had been guilty towards the pope in suppressing the 
nhibitor}'^ letter addressed to the Archbishop of York, Alexander might 
oerhaps have beei' induced at last to approve of such a measure. 



Thomas Bechet. 109 

** You will lay the realm under interdict, then, and ex- 
communicate the whole of us ? " said Fitzurse. 

" So God help me," said one of the others, " he shall not 
do that. He has excommunicated over-many already. We 
have borne too long with him." 

The knights sprang to their feet, twisting their gloves 
and swinging their arms. The archbishop rose. In the 
general noise words could no longer be accurately heard. 
At length the knights moved to leave the room, and, ad- 
dressing the archbishop's attendants, said, " In the king's 
name we command you to see that this man does not 
escape." 

'' Do you think I shall fly, then ? " cried the archbishop. 
" Neither for the king nor for any living man will I fly. 
You cannot be more ready to kill me than I am to die. . . . 
Here you will find me," he shouted, following them to the 
door as they went out, and calling after them. Some of 
his friends thought that he had asked De Morville to come 
back and speak quietly with him, but it was not so. He 
returned to his seat still excited and complaining. 

" My lord," said John of Salisbury to him, " it is strange 
that you will never be advised. What occasion was there 
for you to go after these men and exasperate them with 
your bitter speeches ? You would have done better surely 
by being quiet and giving them a milder answer. They 
mean no good, and you only commit yourself." 

The archbishop sighed, and said, " I have done with ad- 
vice. I know what I have before me." 

It was four o'clock when the knights entered. It was 
now nearly five ; and unless there were lights the room 
must have been almost dark. Beyond the archbishop's 
chamber was an ante-room, beyond the ante-room the hall. 
The knights, passing through the hall into the quadrangle, 
and thence to the lodge, called their men to arms. The 
great gate was closed. A mounted guard was stationed 
outside with orders to allow no one to go out or in. The 



110 Life and Times of 

knights threw off their cloaks and buckled on their swords. 
This was the work of a few minutes. From the cathedral 
tower the vesper bell was beginning to sound. The arch- 
bishop had seated himself to recover from the agitation of 
the preceding scene, when a breathless monk rushed in to 
say that the knights were arming. " Who cares ? Let 
them arm," was all that the archbishop said. His clergy 
were less indifferent. If the archbishop was ready for 
death they were not. The door from the hall into the 
court was closed and barred, and a short respite was thus 
secured. The intention of the knights, it may be pre- 
sumed, was to seize the archbishop and carry him off to 
Saltwood, or to De Morville's castle at Knaresborough, or 
perhaps to Normandy. Coming back to execute their pur- 
pose, they found themselves stopped by the hall door. To 
burst it open would require time ; the ante-room between 
the hall and the archbishop's apartments opened by an oriel 
window and an outside stair into a garden. Robert de 
Broc, who knew the house well, led the way to it in the 
dark. The steps were broken, but a ladder was standing 
against the window, by which the knights mounted, and 
the crash of the falling casement told the fluttered group 
about the archbishop that their enemies were upon them. 
There was still a moment. The party who entered by the 
window, instead of turning into the archbishop's room, first 
went into the hall to open the door and admit their com- 
rades. From the archbishop's room a second passage, little 
used, opened into the northwest corner of the cloister, and 
from the cloister there was a way into the north transept of 
the cathedral. The cry was, " To the church. To the 
church." There at least there would be immediate safety. 

The archbishop had told the knights that they would 
find him where they left him. He did not choose to show 
fear, or he was afraid, as some thought, of losing his martyr- 
dom. He would not move. The bell had ceased. They 
reminded him that vespers had begun, and that lie ought to 



Thomas Becket. Ill 

be in the cathedral. Half yielding, half resisting, his friends 
swept him down the passage into the cloister. His cross 
had been foro^otten in the haste. He refused tc stir till it 
was fetched and carried before him as usual. Then only, 
himself incapable of fear, and rebuking the terror of the 
rest, he advanced deliberately to the door into the south 
transept.-^ His train was scattered behind him, all along 
the cloister from the passage leading out of the palace. As 
he entered the church cries were heard from which it be- 
came plain that the knights had broken into the arch- 
bishop's room, had found the passage, and were following 
him. Almost immediately Fitzurse, Tracy, De Morville, 
and Le Breton were discerned, in the dim light, coming 
through the cloister in their armor, with drawn swords, and 
axes in their left hands. A company of men-at-arms was 
behind them. In front they were driving before them a 
frightened flock of monks. 

From the middle of the transept in which the archbishop 
was standing a single pillar rose into the roof. On the 
eastern side of it opened a chapel of St. Benedict, in which 
were the tombs of several of the old primates. On the 
west, running, of course, parallel to the nave, was a lady 
chapel. Behind the pillar steps led up into the choir, 
where voices were already singing vespers. A faint light 
may have been reflected into the transept from the choir 
tapers, and candles may perhaps have been burning before 
the altars in the two chapels — of light from without through 
the windows at that hour there could have been none. See- 
ing the knights coming on, the clergy who had entered with 
the archbishop closed the door and barred it. " What do 

1 Those who desire a more particular account of the scene about to be 
described should refer to Dean Stanley's essay on the murder of Becket, 
which is printed in his Antiquities of Canterbury. Along with an exact 
knowledge of the localities and a minute acquaintance with the contempo- 
rary narratives, Dr. Stanley combines the far more rare power of histor- 
ical imagination, which enables him to replace out of his materials an ex- 
»ct picture of what took place. 



112 Life and Times of 

you fear ? " he cried in a clear, loud voice. " Out of the 
way, you cowards ! The Church of God must not be made 
a fortress." He stepped back and reopened the door with 
his own hands, to let in the trembling wretches who had 
been shut out among the wolves. They rushed past him, and 
scattered in the hiding-places of the vast sanctuary, in the 
crypt, in the galleries, or behind the tombs. All, or almost 
all, even of his closest friends, William of Canterbury, Ben- 
edict, John of Salisbury himself forsook him to shift for 
themselves, admitting frankly that they were unworthy of 
martyrdom. The archbishop was left alone with his chap- 
lain Fitzstephen, Robert of Merton his old master, and Ed- 
ward Grim, the stranger from Cambridge — or perhaps with 
Grim only, who says that he was the only one who stayed, 
and was the only one certainly who showed any sign of cour- 
age. A cry had been raised in the choir that armed men 
were breaking into the cathedral. The vespers ceased ; the 
few monks assembled left their seats and rushed to the edge 
of the transept, looking wildly into the darkness. 

The archbishop was on the fourth step beyond the central 
pillar ascending into the choir when the knights came in. 
The outline of his figure may have been just visible to 
them, if light fell upon it from candles in the lady chapel. 
Fitzurse passed to the right of the pillar, De Morville, 
Tracy, and Le Breton to the left. Robert de Broc and 
Hugh Mauclerc, another apostate priest, remained at the 
door by which they entered. A voice cried, '•' Where is the 
traitor ? Where is Thomas Becket ? " There was silence ; 
such a name could not be acknowledged. " Where is the 
archbishop?" Fitzurse shouted. "I am here," the arch- 
bishop replied, descending the steps, and meeting the knights 
full in the face. " What do you want with me ? I am 
not afraid of your swords. I will not do what is unjust." 
The knights closed round bim. "Absolve the persons 
whom you have excommunicated," they said, " and take off 
the suspensions." " They have made no satisfaction," he 



I 



Thomas Becket. 113 

answered ; " I will not." " Then you shall die as you have 
deserved," they said. 

They had not meant to kill him — certainly not at that 
time and in that place. One of them touched him on the 
shoulder with the flat of his sword, and hissed in his ears, 
" Fly, or you are a dead man." There was still time ; with 
a few steps he would have been lost in the gloom of the 
cathedral, and could have concealed him in any one of a 
hundred hiding-places. But he was careless of life, and he 
felt that his time was come. " I am ready to die," he said. 
" May the Church through my blood obtain peace and 
liberty ! I charge you in the name of God that you hurt 
no one here but me. The people from the town were now 
pouring into the cathedral ; De Morville was keeping them 
back with difficulty at the head of the steps from the choir, 
and there was danger of a rescue. Fitzurse seized him, 
meaning to drag him off as a prisoner. He had been calm 
so far ; his pride rose at the indignity of an arrest. " Touch 
me not, thou abominable wretch ! " he said, wrenching his 
cloak out of Fitzurse's grasp. " Off, thou pander, thou ! " ^ 
Le Breton and Fitzurse grasped him again, and tried to 
force him upon Tracy's back. He grappled with Tracy and 
flung him to the ground, and then stood with his back 
against the pillar, Edward Grim supporting him. Fitzurse, 
stung by the foul epithet which Becket had thrown at him, 
swept his sword over him and dashed off his cap. Tracy, 
rising from the pavement, struck direct at his head. Grim 
raised his arm and caught the blow. The arm fell broken, 
and the one friend found faithful sank back disabled against 
the wall. The sword, with its remaining force, wounded 
the archbishop above the forehead, and the blood trickled 
down his face. Standing firmly, with his hands clasped, he 
bent his neck for the death-stroke, saying in a low voice, 
" I am prepared to die for Christ and for His Church." 

1 "Lenonem appellans." In extreme moments Becket was never able 
to maintain his dignity. 
8 



114 Life and Times of 

These were his last words. Tracy again struck him. He 
fell forward upon his knees and hands. In that position 
Le Breton dealt him a blow which severed the scalp from 
the head and broke the sword against the stone, saying, 
" Take that for my Lord William." De Broc or Mauclerc 
— the needless ferocity was attributed to both of them — 
strode forward from the cloister door, set his foot on the 
neck of the dead lion, and spread the brains upon the pave- 
ment with his sword's point. " We may go," he said; " the 
traitor is dead, and will trouble us no more." 

Such was the murder of Becket, the echoes of which are 
still heard across seven centuries of time, and which, be the 
final judgment upon it what it may, has its place among the 
most enduring incidents of English history. Was Becket 
a martyr, or was he justly executed as a traitor to his sover- 
eign ? Even in that supreme moment of terror and won- 
der, opinions were divided among his own monks. That 
very night Grim heard one of them say, " He is no martyr, 
he is justly served." Another said, scarcely feeling, per- 
haps, the meaning of the words, " He wished to be king 
and more than king. Let him be king, let him be king." 
Whether the cause for which he died was to prevail, or 
whether the sacrifice had been in vain, hung on the answer 
which would be given to this momentous question. In a 
few days or weeks an answer came in a form to which in 
that age no rejoinder was possible, and the only uncertainty 
which remained at Canterbury was whether it was lawful 
to use the ordinary prayers for the repose of the dead man's 
soul, or whether, in consequence of the astounding miracles 
which were instantly worked by his remainsj the pope's 
judgment ought not to be anticipated, and the archbishop 
ought not to be at once adored as a saint in heaven. 



Thomas Becket. 115 



CHAPTER XL 

Martyr for the Church of Christ, or turbulent incen- 
diary justly punished for his madness or presumption ? 
That was the alternative which lay before the judgment of 
the Christian world. On the response which would be 
given depended interests which stretched far beyond the 
limits of Becket's own island home. How vast were the 
issues, how possible was an unfavorable conclusion, may be 
seen in the passionate language in which Benedict of Can- 
terbury describes the general feeling, and relates the influ- 
ences by which alone the popular verdict was decided in 
the archbishop's favor. 

Our crowned head was taken from us, the glory of angels and 
of Angles. We were orphans who had lost their father. The 
mother Church was desolate, and her children were not lament- 
ing. She sought for some to comfort her, yet found she none. 
She was weeping, and her children were glad. Our own noble 
monastery was speechless, and cruel mockers said it was well 
done. The brethren mingled their bread with tears, but they 
kept silence. Had not light risen upon us from on high, we 
had been lost forever. Praised be He who looked upon us in 
the day of our affliction! All generations shall now call us 
blessed. When the martyr was slain our young men saw 
visions, our old men dreamed dreams; and then came the mira- 
cles, and we knew that God had exalted the horn of his anointed 
one. 

The sheep were scattered: the hirelings had fled. There had 
not been found a man who would stand beside the lord of Can- 
terbury against the workers of iniquity. The second part of 
Christendom bad gone astray after the idol Baal, the apostate, 
the antipope. Who can say what the end might not have 
been? In the blood of the martyr of Canterbury the Most 



116 Life and Times of 

High provided an expiation for tlie sins of tlie world. The 
darkness passed away before the splendor of the miracles. The 
seed of the word sprang up. Unnumbered sinners are con- 
verted daily, and beat their breasts and turn back into the fold. 
Our anointed Gideon had his lamp in a pitcher : the clay of 
the earthly body was broken, and light shone out. The schis- 
matic Octavian was at once condemned^and Pope Alexander 
was established in Peter's chair. If Alexander had not been 
our true father, the martyr who adhered to him would have 
been defiled by the pitch which he had touched. His miracles 
prove that he had not been defiled. No man could do such 
wonders unless God was with him. 

And as he died for the Universal Church, so especially he 
died for the Church of Canterbury. Let his successor not aban- 
don the rights which our holy martyr defended. Let him not 
despise the law of the Church, or depart from obedience to Pope 
Alexander. Let his holiness be glad that in these last times, 
and in the ends of the earth, he has found such a son. Let the 
children of Canterbury rejoice that the consolation of such 
miracles has been vouchsafed to them. Let the whole earth 
exult, and they that dwell therein. On those who walked in 
darkness the light has shined. The fearful shepherds have 
learned boldness; the sick are healed; the repenting sinner is 
forgiven. Through the merits of our blessed martyr the blind 
see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the 
dead are raised up, the poor have the Gospel preached to them. 
In him all the miracles of the Gospel are repeated, and find their 
full completion. Four times the lamps about his tomb have 
been kindled by invisible hands. An innocent man who was 
mutilated by the executioner called on the martyr for help and 
is restored : new eyes and new members have been granted to 
him. Never anywhere, so soon after death and in so brief a 
time, has saint been made illustrious by so many and so mighty 
tokens of God's favor. ^ 

Miracles come w^hen they are needed. They come not 

of fraud, biio they come of an impassioned credulity which 

creates what it is determined to find. Given an enthusiastic 

<3esire that God should miraculously manifest Himself, the 

1 Materials^ vol. ii. p. 21 (abridged). 



Thomas Bechet. 117 

religious imagination is never long at a loss for facts to 
prove that He has done so ; and in proportion to the mag- 
nitude of the interests at stake is the scale of the miraculous 
interposition. In the eyes of Europe, the cause in which 
Becket fell was the cause of sacerdotalism as against the 
prosaic virtues of justice and common sense. Every super- 
stitious mind in Christendom was at work immediately, gen- 
erating supernatural evidence which should be universal 
and overwhelming. When once the impression was started 
that Becket's relics were working miracles, it spread like 
an epidemic. Either the laws of nature were suspended, or 
for the four years which followed his death the power and 
the wish were gone to distinguish truth from falsehood. 
The most ordinary events were transfigured. That version 
of any story was held to be the truest which gave most 
honor to the martyr. That was the falsest which seemed 
to detract from his glory. As Becket in his life had repre- 
sented the ambition and arrogance of the Catholic Church, 
and not its genuine excellence, so it was his fate in death to 
represent beyond all others the false side of Catholic teach- 
ing, and to gather round himself the most amazing agglom- 
erate of lies. 

The stream which was so soon to roll in so mighty a 
volume rose first in the humble breast of Benedict the 
monk. After the murder the body was lifted by the 
trembling brotherhood from the spot where it had fallen, 
and was laid for the night in front of the high altar. The 
monks then sought their pallets with one thought in the 
minds of all of them. Was the archbishop a saint, or was 
he a vain dreamer ? God only could decide. Asleep or 
awake — he was unable to say which — Benedict conceived 
that he saw the archbishop going towards the altar in his 
robes, as if to say mass. He approached him trembling. 
" My lord," he supposed himself to have said, " are you 
not dead ? " The archbishop answered, " I was dead, but I 
have risen again." " If you are risen, and, as we believe, a 



118 Life and Times of 

martyr," Benedict said, " will you not manifest yourself to 
the world?" The archbishop showed Benedict a lantern 
with a candle dimly burning in it. " I bear a light," he 
said, " but a cloud at present conceals it." He then seemed 
to ascend the altar steps. The monks in the choir began 
the introit. The archbishop took the word from them, and 
in a rich, full voice poured out, " Arise, why sleepest thou, 
O Lord ? Arise, and cast us not forth forever." 

Benedict was dreaming; but the dream was converted 
into instant reality. The word went round the dormitory 
that the archbishop had risen from the dead and had ap- 
peared to Benedict. The monks, scarcely knowing whether 
they too were awake or entranced, flitted into the cathedral 
to gaze on the mysterious form before the altar. In the 
dim winter dawn they imagined they saw the dead man's 
arm raised as if to bless them. The candles had burnt out. 
Some one placed new candles in the sockets and lighted 
them. Those who did not know whose hand had done it 
concluded that it was an angel's. Contradiction was un- 
heard or unbelieved ; at such a moment incredulity was 
impious. Rumors flew abroad that miracles had already 
begun, and when the cathedral doors were opened the 
townspeople flocked in to adore. They rushed to the scene 
of the murder. They dipped their handkerchiefs in the 
sacred stream which lay moist upon the stones. A woman 
whose sight had been weak from some long disease touched 
her eyes with the blood, and cried aloud that she could 
again see cleai'ly. Along with the tale of the crime there 
spread into the country, gathering volume as it rolled, the 
story of the wonders which had begun ; and every pious 
heart which had beat for the archbishop when he was alive 
was set bounding with delighted enthusiasm. A lady in 
Sussex heard of the miracle with the woman. Her sight, 
too, was failing. Divinitus inspirata, under a divine in- 
spiration, which anticipated the judgment of the Church, 
she prayed to the blessed martyr St. Thomas, and was in- 



Thomas Bechet. 119 

stantly restored. Two days later a man at Canterbury who 
was actually blind recovered his sight. The brothers at the 
cathedral whose faith had been weak were supernaturally 
strengthened. The last doubter among them was converted 
by a vision. 

In the outside world there were those who said that the 
miracles were delusion or enchantment ; but with the scoffs 
came tales of the retribution which instantly overtook the 
scoffers. A priest at Nantes was heard to say that if strange 
things had happened at Canterbury the cause could not be 
the merits of the archbishop, for God would not work mira- 
cles for a traitor. As " the man of Belial " uttered his 
blasphemies his eyes dropped from their sockets, and he 
fell to the ground foaming at the mouth. His compan- 
ions carried him into a church, replaced the eyeballs, and 
sprinkled them with holy water, and prayed to St. Thomas 
for pardon. St. Thomas was slowly appeased, and the 
priest recovered, to be a sadder and a wiser man. 

Sir Thomas of Ecton had known Becket in early youth, 
and refused to believe that a profligate scoundrel could be a 
saint. -^ Sir Thomas was seized with a quinsy which almost 
killed him, and only saved his life by instant repentance. 

In vain the De Brocs and their friends attempted to stem 
the torrent by threatening to drag the body through the 
streets, to cut it in pieces, and fling it into a cesspool. The 
mob of Kent would have risen in arms, and burnt their 
castle over their heads, had they dared to touch so precious 
a possession. The archbishop was laid in a marble sarcoph- 
agus before the altar of St. John the Baptist in the crypt. 
The brain which De Broc's rude sword had spread out was 
gathered up by reverent hands, the blood stains were scraped 
off the stones, and the precious relics were placed on the 
stone lid where they could be seen by the fiiithful. When 
the body was stripped for burial, on the back were seen the 

1 "Martyrem libidinosi et nebulonis elogio notans." — Williara of Can- 
terbury. Materials, vol. i. 



120 Life and Times of 

marks of the stripes which he had received on the morning 
of his death. The hair shirt and drawers were found 
swarming [scaturientes) with vermin. These transcendent 
evidences of sanctity were laid beside the other treasures, 
and a wall was built round the tomb to protect it from 
profanation, with openings through which the sick and 
maimed, who now came in daily crowds for the martyr's 
help, could gaze and be healed. 

Now came the more awful question. The new saint was 
jealous of his honor: was it safe to withold his title from 
him till the pope had spoken ? He had shown himself 
alive — was it permitted to pray for him as if he were dead ? 
Throughout England the souls of the brethren were exer- 
cised by this dangerous uncertainty. In some places the 
question was settled in the saint's favor by an opportune 
dream. At Canterbury itself more caution was necessary, 
and John of Salisbury wrote to the Bishop of Poitiers for 
advice : 

The blind see (he said), the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the 
lame walk, the devils are cast out. To pray for the soul of one 
whom God had distinguished by miracles so illustrious is injuri- 
ous to him, and bears a show of unbelief. We should have 
sent to consult the pope, but the passages are stopped, and no 
one can leave the harbors without a passport For ourselves, 
we have concluded that we ought to recognize the will of God 
without waiting for the holy father's sanction. ^ 

The pope's ultimate resolution it was impossible to doubt. 
The party of the antipope in England had been put an end 
to by the miracles. Many people had begun to waver in 
their allegiance, and now all uncertainty was gone. It was 
universally admitted that these wonders displayed in favor 
of a person who had been on Alexander's side conclusively 

1 John of Salisbury to the Bishop of Poitiers. Letters, vol. ii. pp. 257, 
258 (abridged). How John of Salisbury was able to write both to the 
Bishop of Poitiers and to the Archbishop of Sens, if he was unable to write 
to Rome because the passages were stopped, does not appear. 



Thomas Bechet. 121 

decided the question.^ Alexander would do well, however, 
John of Salisbury thought, to pronounce the canonization 
with as little delay as possible 

The epidemic was still in its infancy. The miracles al- 
ready mentioned had been worked in comparative privacy 
in the first few weeks which succeeded the martyrdom. Be- 
fore the summer the archbishop's admirers were contending 
with each other in every part of Europe which could report 
the most amazing miracles that had been worked by his 
intervention or by the use of his name. Pilgrims began to 
stream to Canterbury with their tales of marvel and their 
rich thanksgiving offerings. A committee of monks was 
appointed to examine each story in detail. Their duty was 
to assure themselves that the alleged miracle was reality 
and not imagination. Yet thousands were allowed to pass 
as adequately and clearly proved. Every day under their 
own eyes the laws of nature were set aside. The aperture 
in the wall round the tomb contracted or enlarged according 
to the merit of the visitants. A small and delicate woman 
could not pass so much as her head through it to look at 
the relics. She was found to be living in sin. A monster 
of a man possessed by a devil, but honestly desirous of sal- 
vation, plunged through, body and all. The spectators 
(Benedict among them, who tells the story) supposed it 
would be necessary to pull the wall down to get him free. 
He passed out with the same ease with which he had 
entered. But when the monks told him to repeat the ex- 
periment, stone and mortar had resumed their properties. 

The blood gathered on the handkerchiefs from the pave- 
ment had shown powers so extraordinary that there was a 
universal demand for it. The difficulty from the limitation 
of quantity was got over in various ways. At first it ex- 

1 *' Dubitatur a plurimis an pars domini papse in quS, stamus de justiti^ 
niteretur, sed earn a crimine gloriosus martyr absolvit, qui si fautor erat 
pchismatis nequaquam tantis miraculis coruscaret." — To the Archbishop 
of Sens. Letters, vol. ii. p. 263. 



122 Life and Times of 

hibited a capacity for self-multiplication. A single drop 
might be poured into a bottle, and the bottle would be 
found full. Afterwards a miraculous fountain broke out in 
the crypt, with the water from which the blood was mixed. 
The smallest globule of blood, fined down by successive 
recombinations to a fraction of unimaginable minuteness, 
imparted to the water the virtues of the perfect original. 
St. Thomas's water became the favorite remedy for all dis- 
eases throughout the Christian world, the sole condition of 
a cure being that doctor's medicines should be abjured. The 
behavior of the liquid, as described by Benedict, who re- 
lates what he professes to have continually seen, was eccen- 
tric and at first incomprehensible. A monk at the fountain 
distributed it to the pilgrims, who brought wooden boxes 
in which to carry it away. When poured into these boxes 
it would sometimes effervesce or boil. More often the box 
would split in the pilgrim's hand. Some sin unconfessed was 
supposed to be the cause, and the box itself, after such a 
misfortune, was left as an offering at the tomb. The split- 
ting action after a time grew less violent, and was confined 
to a light crack. One day a woman brought a box which 
became thus slightly injured. The monk to whom she gave 
it thought it was too good to be wasted, and was meditating 
in his own mind that he would keep it for himself. At the 
moment that the wicked thought formed itself the box flew 
to pieces in his hands with a loud crash. He dropped it, 
shrieking that it was possessed. Benedict and others ran 
in, hearing him cry, to find him in an agony of terror. The 
amusement with which Benedict admits that they listened 
to his story suggests a suspicion that in this instance at least 
the incident was not wholly supernatural.-^ Finding boxes 
liable to these misfortunes, the pilgrims next tried stone 
bottles, but with no better success — the stone cracked like 
the wood. A youth at Canterbury suggested tin ; the burst- 

1 " Hoc miraculum tam joco et risui multis extitit quam admirationi." 
— Materials, vol. ii. 



Thomas Beclcet, 123 

« 

ing miracle ceased, and the meaning of it was then per- 
ceived. The pilgrims were intended to carry St. Thomas's 
water round the world, hung about their necks in bottles 
which could be at once secure and sufficiently diminutive for 
transport. A vessel that could be relied on being thus 
obtained, the trade became enormous. Though the holy 
thing might not be sold, the recipient of the gift expressed 
his gratitude by corresponding presents; and no diamond 
mine ever brought more wealth to its owners than St. 
Thomas's water brought to the monks of Canterbury. 

As time went on the miracles grew more and more pro- 
digious. At first weak eyes were made strong; then sight 
was restored which was wholly gone. At first sick men 
were made whole ; then dead men were brought back to 
life. At first there was the unconscious exaggeration of 
real phenomena ; then there was incautious embellishment. 
Finally, in some instances of course with the best inten- 
tions, there was perhaps deliberate lying. . To which of 
these classes the story should be assigned which has now 
to be told the reader must decide for himself. No miracle 
in sacred history is apparently better attested. The more 
complete the evidence, the more the choice is narrowed to 
the alternative between a real supernatural occurrence and 
an intentional fraud. 

In the year which followed Becket's death there lived 
near Bedford a small farmer named Aylward. This Ayl- 
ward, unable to recover otherwise a debt from one of his 
neighbors, broke into his debtor's house, and took posses- 
sion of certain small articles of furniture to hold as security. 
The debtor pursued him, wounded him in a scuffle, and car- 
ried him before the head constable of the district, who 
happened to be Aylward's personal enemy. A charge of 
burglary was brought against him, with the constable's sup- 
port. Aylward was taken before the sheriff. Sir Richard 
Fitzosbert, and committed to Bedford Gaol to await his 
trial. The gaol chaplain in the interval took charge of his 



124 Life and Times of 

soul, gave him a whip with which to flog himself five times a 
day, and advised him to consign his cause to the Virgin, 
and especially to the martyr Thomas. At the end of a 
month he was brought before the justices at Leighton Buz- 
zard. The constable appeared to prosecute ; and his own 
story not being received as true, he applied for wager of 
battle with his accuser, or else for the ordeal of hot iron. 
Through underhand influence the judges refused either of 
these comparatively favorable alternatives, and sentenced 
the prisoner to the ordeal of water, which meant death by 
drowning or else dismemberment. The law of the Con- 
queror was still in force. The penalty of felony was not 
the axe or the gallows, but mutilation ; and the water ordeal 
being over, which was merely a form, Aylward, in the pres- 
ence of a large number of clergy and laity, was delivered 
to the knife. He bled so much that he was supposed to be 
dying, and he received the last sacrament. A compassionate 
neighbor, however, took him into his house, and attended 
to his wounds, which began slowly to heal. On the tenth 
night St. Thomas came to his bedside, made a cross on his 
forehead, and told him that if he presented himself the next 
day with a candle at the altar of the Virgin in Bedford 
Church, and did not doubt in his heart, but believed that 
God was able and willing to cure him, his eyes would be 
restored. In the morning he related his vision. It was 
reported to the dean, who himself accompanied him to the 
altar, the townspeople coming in crowds to witness the prom- 
ised miracle. The blinded victim of injustice and false 
evidence believed as he was directed, and prayed as he was 
directed. The bandages were then removed from the empty 
eye sockets, and in the hollows two small glittering spots 
were seen, the size of the eyes of a small bird, with which 
Aylward pronounced that he could again see. He set off 
at once to offer his thanks to his preserver at Canterbury. 
The rumor of the miracle had preceded him, and in London 
he was detained by the bishop till the truth had been in- 



Thomas BecJcet. 125 

quired into. The result was a deposition signed by the 
Mayor and Corporation of Bedford, declaring that they had 
ascertained the completeness of the mutilation beyond all 
possibility of doubt. 

Very curiously, precisely the same miracle was repeated 
under similar conditions three years later. Some cavil had 
perhaps been raised on the sufficiency of the evidence. The 
burgesses of a country town were not, it may have been 
thought, men of sufficient knowledge and education to be 
relied upon in so extraordinary a case. The very ability 
of a saint to restore parts of the human body which had 
been removed may have been privately called in question, 
and to silence incredulity the feat was performed a second 
time. There appeared in Canterbury in 1176 a youth 
named Rogers, bringing with him a letter fi*om Hugh, 
Bishop of Durham, to the prior of the monastery. The 
letter stated that in the preceding September the bearer 
had been convicted of theft, and had been mutilated in the 
usual manner. He had subsequently begged his living in 
the Durham streets, and was well known to every one in 
the town to be perfectly blind. In this condition he had 
prayed to St. Thomas. St. Thomas had appeared to him 
in a red gown, with a mitre on his head and three wax 
candles in his hand, and had promised him restoration. 
From that moment his sight began to return, and in a short 
time he could discern the smallest objects. Though, as at 
Bedford, the eyes were modicce quantitatis, exceedingly 
minute, the functions were perfect. The bishop, to leave 
no room for mistake, took the oaths of the executioner and 
the witnesses of the mutilation. The cathedral bells were 
rung, and thanksgiving services were offered to God and 
St. Thomas. 

So far the Bishop of Durham. But the story received a 
further confirmation by a coincidence scarcely less singular. 
When the subject of the miracle came to Canterbury, the 
judge who had tried him happened to be on a visit to the 



126 Life and Times of 

monastery. The meeting was purely accidental. The 
judge had been interested in the boy, and had closely ob- 
served him. He was able to swear that the eyes which he 
then saw were not the eyes which had been cut out by the 
executioner at Durham, being different from them in form 
and color.^ 

When the minds of bishops and judges were thus affected, 
we cease to wonder at the thousand similar stories which 
passed into popular belief. Many of them are childish, 
many grossly ridiculous. The language of the archbishop 
on his miraculous appearances was not like his own, but was 
the evident creation of the visionary who was the occasion 
of his visit ; and his actions were alternately the actions of 
a benevolent angel or a malignant imp. But all alike were 
received as authentic, and served to swell the flood of illu- 
sion which overspread the Christian world. For four years 
the entire supernatural administration of the Churcl] econ- 
omy was passed over to St. Thomas ; as if Heaven designed 
to vindicate the cause of the martyr of Canterbury by 
special and extraordinary favor. In vain during those 
years were prayers addressed to the Blessed Virgin; in 
vain the cripple brought his offerings to shrines where a 
miracle had never been refused before. The Virgin and 
the other dispensers of divine grace had been suspended 
from activity, that the champion of the Church might have 
the glory to himself. The elder saints had long gone to 
and fro on errands of mercy. They were now allowed to 
repose, and St. Thomas was all in all.^ 

1 Materials, vol. i. p. 423. 

2 William of Canterbury mentions the case of a man in distress who 
prayed without effect to the Virgin. "Hujusmodi prec us," he says. 
" saepius et propensius instabat; similiter et aliorum sanctorum suffragia 
postulabat, sed ad invocationem sui nominis non exaudierunt, qui retro 
tempora sua glorlficationis habuerunt, ut et sua tempora propitiationis 
martyr modernus haberet. Pridem cucurrerant quantum potuerunt et 
quantum debuerunt signis et prodigiis coruscantes : nunc tandem erat et 
novo martyri currendum, ut in catalogo sanctorum mirificus haberetur, 



Thomas Becket, 127 

Greater for a time than the Blessed Virgin, greater than 
the saints! — nay, another superiority was assigned to him 
still more astounding. The sacrifice of St. Thomas was 
considered to be wider and more gracious in its operation 
than the sacrifice on Calvary. Foliot, Bishop of London, 
so long his great antagonist, was taken ill a few years after 
the murder, and was thought to be dying. He was speech- 
less. The Bishop of Salisbury sat by him, endeavoring to 
hear his confession before giving him the sacrament. The 
voice was choked, the lips were closed ; he could neither 
confess his sins nor swallow his viaticum^ and nothing lay 
before him but inevitable hell, when, by a happy thought, 
sacrament was added to sacrament — the wafer was sprin- 
kled with the water of St. Thomas, and again held to the 
mouth of the dying prelate. Marvel of marvels ! the tight- 
ened sinews relaxed. The lips unclosed ; the tongue re- 
sumed its ofiice ; and when all ghostly consolation had been 
duly offered and duly received, Foliot was allowed to re- 
cover. 

" martyr full of mercy ! " exclaims the recorder of the 
miracle, " blessedly forgetful art thou of thy own injuries, 
who didst thus give to drink to thy disobedient and rebel- 
lious brother of the fountain of thy own blood. O deed 
without example ! act incomparable ! Christ gave his 
flesh and blood to be eaten and drunk by sinners. St. 
Thomas, who imitated Christ in his passion, imitates Him 
also in the sacrament. But there is this difference, that 
Christ damns those who eat and drink Him unworthily, or 
takes their lives from them, or afflicts them with diseases. 
The blessed Thomas, doing according to his Master's prom- 
ise greater things than He, and being more full of mercy 
than He, gives his blood to his enemies as well as to his 
friends ; and not only does not damn his enemies, but calls 

Domino dippensante quae, a quibus, et quibus temporibus fieri debeant. 
Eo namque ciirrente et mapjna spatia transcurrcnte, illis tanquam Vetera- 
uis et emeritis interim debebatur otium." — Materials, vol. i. p. 290. 



128 Life and Times of 

them back into the ways of peace. All men, therefore, maj 
come to him and drink without fear, and they shall find sal- 
vation, body and soul." ^ 

The details of the miracles contain many interestir.g pict- 
ures of old English life. St. Thomas was kind to persons 
drowned or drowning, kind to prisoners, especially kind to 
children. He was interested in naval matters — launching 
vessels from the stocks when the shipwrights could not 
move them, or saving mariners and fishermen in shipwrecks. 
According to William of Canterbury, the archbishop in his 
new condition had a weakness for the married clergy, many 
miracles being worked by him for a focaria. Dead lambs, 
geese, and pigs were restored to life, to silence Sadducees 
who doubted the resurrection. In remembrance of his old 
sporting days, the archbishop would mend the broken wings 
and legs of hawks which had suffered from the herons. 
Boys and girls found him always ready to listen to their 
small distresses. A Suffolk yeoman, William of Ramshott, 
had invited a party to a feast. A neighbor had made him 
a present of a cheese, and his little daughter Beatrice had 
been directed to put it away in a safe place. Beatrice did 
as she was told, but went to play with her brother Hugh, 
and forgot what she had done with it. The days went on ; 
the feast day was near. The children hunted in every cor- 
nei of the house, but no cheese could be found. The near- 
est town was far off. They had no money to buy another 
if they could reach it, and a whipping became sadly prob- 
able. An idea struck the little Hugh. " Sister," he said, 
" I have heard that the blessed Thomas is good and kind. 
Let us pray to Thomas to help us." They went to their 
beds, and, as Hugh foretold, the saint came to them in their 
dreams. " Don't you remember," he said, " the old crock 
in the back kitchen, where the butter used to be kept?" 
They sprang up, and all was well. 

The original question between the king and the arch- 
1 Materials, vol. i. pp. 251, 252. 



Thomas BeckeU 129 

bishop still agitated men's minds, and was still so far from 
practical settlement that visions were necessary to convei* 
the impenitent. A knight of the court, who contended for 
the Constitutions of Clarendon, and continued stubborn, was 
struck with paralysis. Becket came and bade him observe 
that the Judge of truth had decided against the king by 
signs and wonders, and that it was a sin to doubt any fur- 
ther. The knight acknowledged his error. Others were 
less penetrable. The miracles, it was still said, might be 
deceptive ; and, true or false, miracles could not alter mat- 
ters of plain right or wrong. Even women were found who 
refused to believe ; and a characteristic story is told, in 
which we catch a glimpse of one of the murderers. 

A party of gentlemen were dining at a house in Sussex. 
Hngh de Morville was in the neighborhood, and while they 
were sitting at dinner a note was brought in from him ask- 
ing one of the guests who was an old acquaintance to call 
and see him. The person to whom the note was addressed 
read it with signs of horror. When the cause was ex- 
plained, the lady of the house said, " Is that all ? What is 
there to be alarmed about ? The priest Thomas is dead : 
well, why need that trouble us ? The clergy were putting 
their feet on the necks of us all. The archbishop wanted 
to be the king's master, and he has not succeeded. Eat 
your victuals, neighbor, like an honest man." The poor 
lady expressed what doubtless many were feeling. An ex- 
ample was necessary, and one of her children was at once 
taken dangerously ill. The county neighbors said it was a 
judgment ; she was made to confess her sins and carry her 
child to Canterbury to be cured, where, having been the 
subject of divine interposition, he was " dedicated to God " 
and was brought up a monk. 

Through the offerings the monastery at Canterbury be- 
came enormously rich, and riches produced their natural 
effect. Giraldus Cambrensis, when he paid a visit there a 
few years later, found the mo; ks dining more luxuriously 
9 



130 Life and Times of 

than the king. According to Nigellus, the precentor of the 
cathedral, their own belief in the wonders which they daily 
witnessed was not profound, since in the midst of them 
Kigellus could write deliberately, as the excuse for the 
prevalent profligacy of churchmen, " that the age of mir- 
acles was past." It was observed, and perhaps commented 
on, that unless the offerings were handsome the miracles 
were often withheld. So obvious was this feature that 
William of Canterbury was obliged to apologize for it. 
" The question rises," he says, " why the martyr takes such 
delight in these donations, being now, as he is, in heaven, 
where covetousness can have no place. Some say that the 
martyr, when in the body, on the occasion of his going into 
exile, borrowed much money, being in need of it for his 
fellow exiles, and to make presents at court. Being unable 
to repay his creditors in life, he may have been anxious 
after death that his debts should be discharged, lest his 
good name should suffer. And therefore it may be that all 
these kings and princes, knights, bishops, priests, monks, 
nuns, all ages and conditions, are inspired by God to come 
in such troops and take so many vows on them to grant 
pensions and annuities." ^ 

There is no occasion to pursue into further details the 
history of this extraordinary alliance between religion and 
lying, which forced on Europe the most extravagant sacer- 
dotalism by evidence as extravagant as itself. By an ap- 
propriate affinity the claims of the Church to spiritual 
supremacy were made to rest on falsehood, whether uncon- 
scious or deliberate, and when the falsehood ceased to be 
credible the system which was based upon it collapsed. 
Thus all illusions work at last their own retribution. Eccle- 
siastical miracles are not worked in vindication of purity of 
life or piety of character. They do not intrude themselves 
into a presence to which they can lend no increase of beauty 
and furnish no additional authority. They are the spurious 
1 Materials, vol. i. p. 327. 



Thomas Becket. 131 

offspring of the passion of theologians for tlieir own most 
extravagant assumptions. They are believed, they becom* 
the material of an idolatry, till the awakened conscience of 
the better part of mankind rises at last in revolt, and the 
fantastic pretensions and the evidence, alleged in support of 
them depart together and cumber the world no more. We 
return to authentic history. 



132 Life and Times of 



CHAPTER XII. 

When the news of the catastrophe at Canterbury arrived 
in Normandy, the king was for a time stunned. None 
knew better than he the temper of his subjects on the pres- 
ent condition of the dispute with the Church. The death 
of the great disturber was natural, and may, perhaps, have 
been inevitable. Nevertheless, if the result of it as seemed 
too likely to be the case, was his own excommunication 
and an interdict on his dominions, a rebellion in Normandy 
was certain, and a rebellion in England was only too prob- 
able. Firm as might have been his own grasp, his hold on 
his continental duchies was not strengthened by his English 
sovereignty. The Norman nobles and prelates saw their 
country sliding into a province of the island kingdom which 
their fathers had subdued. If they were to lose their inde- 
pendence, their natural affinity was towards the land with 
which they were geographically combined. The revolu- 
tionary forces were already at work which came to maturity 
in the next generation, and if Normandy and Anjou were 
laid under interdict for a crime committed in England and 
for an English cause, an immediate insurrection might be 
anticipated with certainty. The state of England was 
scarcely more satisfactory. The young princes, who had 
been over-indulged in childhood, were showing symptoms 
of mutiny. The private relations between an English sov- 
ereign and his family were not yet regarded as the prop- 
erty of his subjects ; the chroniclers rarely indulged in de- 
tails of royal scandals, and the dates of Henry's infidelities 
are vaguely given. Giraldus says that he remained true to 
his queen till she tempted her sons into rebellion, but Elea- 



Thomas BecJcet. 133 

nor herself might have told the story differently, and the 
fire which was about to burst so furiously may have been 
long smouldering. As to the people generally, it was evi- 
dent that Becket had a formidable faction among them. 
The humpbacked Earl of Leicester was dead, but his son, 
the new earl, was of the same temper as his father. The 
barons resented the demolition of their castles, which the 
king had already begun, and the curtailment of their feudal 
authority. An exasperating inquiry was at that moment 
going forward into the conduct of the sheriffs. They had 
levied tax and toll at their pleasure, and the king's inter- 
ference with them they regarded as an invasion of their 
liberties. Materials for complaint were lying about in 
abundance, and anything might be feared if to the injuries 
of the knights and barons were added the injuries of the 
Church, and rebellion could be gilded with a show of sanc- 
tity. The same spirit which sent them to die under the 
walls of Acre might prompt them equally to avenge the 
murder of the archbishop. Henry himself was a repre- 
sentative of his age. He, too, really believed that the 
clergy were semi-supernatural beings, whose curse it might 
be dangerous to undergo. The murder itself had been ac- 
companied with every circumstance most calculated to make 
a profound impression. The sacrilege was something, but 
the sacrilege was not the worst. Many a bloody scene had 
been witnessed in that age in church and cathedral ; abbots 
had invaded one another at the head of armed parties ; 
monks had fought and been killed within consecrated walls, 
and sacred vessels and sacred relics had been carried off 
among bleeding bodies. High dignitaries were occasionally 
poisoned in the sacramental wine, and such a crime, though 
serious, was not regarded as exceptionally dreadful. But 
Becket had but just returned to England after a formal rec- 
onciliation in the presence of all Europe. The King of 
France, the Count of Flanders, and the Count of Blois had 
pledged their words for his safety. He had been killed in 



134 Life and Times of 

his own cathedral. He had fallen with a dignity, and even 
grandeur, which his bitterest enemies were obliged to ad- 
mire. The murderers were Henry's own immediate attend- 
ants, and Henry could not deny that he had himself used 
words which they might construe into a sanction of what 
they had done. 

Giraldus Cambrensis, who when young had seen and 
spoken with him, has left us a sketch of Henry the Second's 
appearance and character more than usually distinct. Henry 
was of middle height, with a thick short neck and a square 
chest. His body was stout and fleshy, his arms sinewy and 
long. His head was round and large, his hair and beard 
reddish-brown, his complexion florid, his eyes gray, with 
fire glowing at the bottom of them. His habits were ex- 
ceptionally temperate; he ate little, drank little, and was 
always extremely active. He was on horseback, at dawn, 
either hunting or else on business. When off his horse he 
was on his feet, and rarely sat down till supper time. He 
was easy of approach, gracious, pleasant, and in conversation 
remarkably agreeable. Notwithstanding his outdoor habits 
he had read largely, and his memory was extremely tena- 
cious. It was said of him, that he never forgot a face 
which he had once seen, or a thing which he had heard or 
read that was worth remembering. He was pious too, Gir- 
aldus says, pietate spectabilis. The piety unfortunately, in 
Giraldus's eyes, took the wrong shape of an over-zeal for 
justice, which brought him into his trouble with the Church, 
while to his technical "religious duties" he was less atten- 
tive than he ought to have been. He allowed but an hour a 
day for mass, and while mass was being said he usually 
thought of something else. To the poor he was profusely 
charitable, " filling the hungry with good things, and send- 
ing the rich empty away." He was largus in publico, parvus 
in privato ; he spent freely in the public service and little 
on himself. As a statesman he was reserved, seldom show- 
ing his own thoughts. He was a good judge of character, 



Thomas Becket. 135 

rarely changing an opinion of a man which he had once 
formed. He was patient of opposition, and trusted much to 
time to find his way through difficulties. In war he was 
dangerous from his energy and his intellect. But he had no 
love for war, he was essentially a friend of peace, and after 
a battle could not control his emotion at the loss of his men. 
" In short," Giraldus concludes, " if God had but elected 
him to grace and converted him to a right understanding of 
the privileges of his Church, he would have been an incom- 
parable prince." -^ Such was Henry, the first of the Eng- 
lish Plantagenet kings, a man whose faults it is easy to 
blame, whose many excellences it would have been less easy 
to imitate — a man of whom may be said what can be 
aflHrmed but rarely of any mortal, that the more clearly his 
history is known the more his errors will be forgiven, the 
more we shall find to honor and admire. 

He was at Argeuteuil when the fatal account was brought 
to him. He shut himself in his room, ate nothing for three 
days, and for five weeks remained in penitential seclusion. 
Time was precious, for his enemies were not asleep. Lewis 
and the Archbishop of Sens wrote passionately to the pope, 
charging the king with the guilt of the murder, and insist- 
ing that so enormous an outrage should be punished at once 
and with the utmost severity. The Archbishop of Sens, 
on his own authority as legate, laid Normandy under inter- 
dict, and Alexander, startled into energy at last, sent per- 
sons to the spot to confirm the archbishop's action, and to 
extend the censures over England. Henry roused himself 
at last. He dispatched the Archbishop of Rouen and two 
other bishops^ to explain what had happened, so far as ex- 
planation was possible ; and as the danger was pressing and 
bishops travelled slowly, three other churchmen, the Abbot 

1 Giraldus, vol. v. p. 301, etc. 

2 The Bishop of Worcester was one of them. The Bishop of Worcester 
'.ould explain to the pope why his inhibitory letter on the coronation had 
never been delivered in Euiiland. 



136 Life and Times of 

of Valaise and the Archdeacons of Lisieux and Salisbury, 
pushed on before them. On their first arrival these envoys 
were refused an audience. When they were admitted to 
Alexander's presence at last, the attempt at palliation was 
listened to with horror. Two of Becket's clergy were at 
the papal court, and had possession of pope and cardinals, 
and it appeared only too likely that at the approaching 
Easter Alexander himself would declare Henry excommu- 
nicated. By private negotiations with some of the cardinals 
they were able to delay the sentence till the coming of the 
bishops. The bishops brought them a promise on Henry's 
part to submit to any penance which the pope might enjoin, 
and to acquiesce in any order which the pope might pre- 
scribe for the government of the clergy. An immediate 
catastrophe was thus averted. Cardinals Albert and Theo- 
doric were commissioned at leisure to repair to Normandy 
and do what might be found necessary. To the mortifica- 
tion of Lewis the censures were meanwhile suspended, and 
the interdict pronounced by the Archbishop of Sens was not 
confirmed. 

Henry on his part prepared to deserve the pope's forgive- 
ness. Uncertain what Alexander might resolve upon, he 
returned to England as soon as he had recovered his energy. 
He renewed the orders at the ports against the admission 
of strangers and against the introduction of briefs from 
Rome, which might disturb the public peace. He then at 
once undertook a duty which long before had been enjoined 
upon him by Alexander's predecessor, and had been left too 
long neglected. 

Ireland had been converted to the Christian faith by an 
apostle from the Holy See, but in seven centuries the Irish 
Church had degenerated from its original purity. Customs 
had crept in unknown in other Latin communions, and 
savoring of schism. No regular communication had been 
maintained with the authorities at Rome ; no confirmation 
of abbots and bishops had been applied for or paid for. At 



Thomas Becket. 137 

a council held in 1151 a papal legate had been present, 
and an arrangement had been made for the presentation of 
the palls of the four Irish archbishoprics. But the legate's 
general account of the state of Irish affairs increased the 
pope's anxiety for more vigorous measures. Not only 
Peter's pence and first fruits were not paid to himself — not 
only tithes were not paid to the clergy — but the most 
sacred rites were perverted or neglected. In parts of the 
island children were not baptized at all. Where baptism 
was observed, it more resembled a magical ceremony than 
a sacrament of the Church. Any person who happened to 
be present at a birth dipped the child three times in water 
or milk, without security for the use of the appointed words. 
Marriage scarcely could be said to exist. An Irish chief 
took as many wives as he pleased, and paid no respect to 
degrees of consanguinity.-^ Even incest was not uncom- 
mon ^ among them. The clergy, though not immoral in the 
technical sense, were hard drinkers. The bishops lived in 
religious houses, and preferred a quiet life to interfering 
with lawlessness and violence. The people of Ireland, ac- 
cording to Giraldus, who was sent over to study their char- 
acter, were bloodthirsty savages, and strangers who settled 
among them caught their habits by an irresistible instinct. 
But Ireland, religious Ireland especially, had something in 
its history which commanded respect and interest. A thou- 
sand saints had printed their names and memories on Irish 
soil. St. Patrick and St. Bride had worked more miracles 
than even the water of St. Thomas. Apostles from Ireland 
had carried the Christian faith into Scotland, into Iceland, 
and into Scandinavia. 

The popes felt the exclusion of so singular a country 
from the Catholic commonwealth to be a scandal which 
ought no longer to be acquiesced in. In 1155 Pope Adrian 

1 "Plerique enim illorum quot volebant uxorcs habebant, et etiam cog- 
natas suas gennanas habere solebant sibi uxores." — Benedict, vol. i. p. 28. 

2 "Xon iucestus vitaiit." — Giraldus Cambreiisis, vol. v. p. 138. 



138 Life and Times of 

had laid before Henry the Second the duty imposed on 
Christian princes to extend the truth among barbarous 
nations, to eradicate vice, and to secure Peter's pence to 
the Holy See ; and a bull had been issued, sanctioning and 
enjoining the conquest of Ireland.^ 

Busy with more pressing concerns, Henry had put off 
the expedition from year to year. Meanwhile, the Irish 
chiefs and kings were quarrelling among themselves. 
MacMorrough of Leinster was driven out, and had come to 
England for help. The king hesitated in his answer ; but 
volunteers had been found for the service in Sir Robert 
Fitzstephen, Sir Maurice Prendergast, Sir Maurice Fitz- 
gerald, Earl Richard Strigul, with other knights and gen- 
tlemen who were eager for adventure ; and a Norman 
occupation had been made good along the eastern coast of 
Munster and Leinster. The invasion had been undertaken 
without the king's consent. He had affected to regard it 
with disapproval ; and the Irish of the west, rallying from 
their first panic, were collecting in force to drive the in- 
truders into the sea. The desirableness of doinoj somethinsr 
to entitle him to the pope's gratitude, the convenience of 
absence from home at a time when dans^erous notices mii^ht 
be served upon him, and the certainty that Alexander would 
hesitate to pronounce him excommunicated when engaged 
in a conquest which, being undertaken under a papal sanc- 

1 Irish Catholic historians pretend that tlie bull was a Norman forgerj'. 
The bull was alleged to have been granted in 1155: in 1170 it was acted 
upon. In 1171-72 a council was held at Cashel, in which the reforms de- 
manded by Pope Adrian were adopted, and the Irish Church was remod- 
elled, and a report of the proceedings was forwarded to Alexander the 
Third. In 1174 a confirmation of the original bull was published, profess- 
mg o^ have been signed b}' Alexander. In 1177 Cardinal Vivian came 
as vjgate from Rome, who, in a synod at Dublin, declared formally in the 
pope's name that the sovereignty of Ireland was vested in the English 
king, and enjoined the Irish to submit sub posnd anathematis. It requires 
some hardihood to maintain in the face of these undisputed facts that the 
pope was kept in ignorance that the island had been invaded and con- 
quered under a sanction doubly forged, and that Cardinal Vivian was 
either a party to the fraud, or that when in Ireland he never discovered it. 



T7tomas Beeket. 13S 

tion, resembled a crusade, determined Henry to use the 
opportunity, ^nd at last accomplish the mission which 
Adrian had imposed upon him. After his return from 
Normandy, he passed rapidly through England. He col- 
lected a fleet at Milford Haven, and landed at Waterford 
on October 18, 1171. All Ireland, except the north, at 
once submitted. The king spent the winter in Dublin in a 
palace of wattles, the best lodging which the country could 
afford. In the spring he was able to report to Alexander 
that the obnoxious customs were abolished, that Catholic 
discipline had been introduced, and that the Irish tribute 
would be thenceforward punctually remitted to the papal 
treasury. 

Could he have remained in Ireland for another year, the 
conquest would have been completed ; but in April he was 
recalled to meet the two cardinals who had arrived in Nor- 
mandy to receive his submission for Becket's death. The 
Irish annexation was of course a service which was permit- 
ted to be counted in his favor, but the circumstances of the 
murder, and Henry's conduct in connection with it, both 
before and after, still required an appearance of scrutiny. 
Not the least remarkable feature in the story is that tl«3 
four knights had not been punished. They had not been 
even arrested. They had gone together, after leaving Can- 
terbury, to De Morville's Castle of Knaresborough. They 
had been excommunicated, but they had received no further 
molestation. It has been conjectured that they owed their 
impunity to Becket's own claim for the exclusive jurisdic- 
tion of the spiritual courts in cases where spiritual persons 
were concerned. But the wildest advocates of the immuni- 
ties of the Church had never dreamed of protecting laymen 
who had laid their hands on clerks. The explanation was 
that the king had acted honorably by taking the responsi- 
bility on himself, and had not condescended to shield his 
own reputation by the execution of men whose fault had 
been over-loyalty to himself Elizabeth might have re- 



140 Life and Times of 

membered with advantage the example of her ancestor 
when she punished Davison, under circumstances not wholly 
dissimilar, for the execution of the Queen of Scots. 

The king met the cardinals at Caen in the middle of 
May. At the first interview the difficulty was disposed of 
which was most immediately pressing, and arrangements 
were made for a repetition of the ceremony which had been 
the occasion of the excommunication of the bishops. Prince 
Henry and the Princess Margaret were ao;ain crowned at 
Winchester on the 27th of August by the Archbishop of 
Rouen and the Bishops of Evreux and Worcester, the same 
prelates who had gone on the mission to Rome. At 
Avranches on the 27th of September, at a second and more 
solemn assembly, the king confessed his guilt for the arch- 
bishop's death. He had not desired it, he said, and it had 
caused him the deepest sorrow ; but he admitted tliat he had 
used words which the knights had naturally misconstrued. 
He attempted no palliation, and declared himself willing to 
endure any penalty which the cardinals might be pleased to 
impose. 

The conditions with which the cardinals were satisfied 
implied an admission that in the original quarrel the right 
had lain with the king. All the miracles at Canterbury 
had made no difi^erence in this essential point. The king 
promised to continue his support to Alexander as long as 
Alexander continued to recognize him as a Catholic sov- 
ereign — as long, that is, as he did not excommunicate him. 
He promised not to interfere with appeals to Rome in ec- 
clesiastical causes, but with the reservation that if he had 
ground for suspecting an invasion of the rights of the crown, 
he might take measures to protect himself. He promised 
to abandon any customs complained of by the Church 
which had been introduced in his own reign ; but such 
customs, he said, would be found to be few or none. He 
pardoned Becket's friends ; he restored the privileges and 
the estates of the see of Canterbury. For himself, he took 



Thomas BecJcet, 141 

the cross, with a vow to serve for three years in the Holy 
Land, unless the pope perceived that his presence was 
needed elsewhere. Meanwhile he promised to maintain 
two hundred Templars there for a year. 

On these terms Henry was absolved. Geoffrey Ridel and 
John of Oxford, Becket's active opponents, whom he had 
twice cursed, were promoted to bishoprics. The four knights 
must have been absolved also, since they returned to the 
court, and, like their master, took the vows as Crusaders. 
The monastic chroniclers consign them to an early and 
miserable death. The industry of Dean Stanley has dis- 
covered them, two years after the murder, to have been 
again in attendance on the sovereign. Tracy became Jus- 
ticiary of Normandy, and was at Falaise in 1174, when 
William the Lion did homage to Henry. De Morville, 
after a year's suspension, became again Justiciary of Nor- 
thumberland. Fitzurse apparently chose L-eland as the 
scene of his penance. A Fitzurse was in the second flight 
of Norman invaders, and was the founder of a family known 
to later history as the MacMahons, the Irish equivalent of 
the Son of the Bear. 

But Henry was not yet delivered from the consequences 
of his contest with Becket, and the conspiracy which had 
been formed against him under the shelter of Becket's name 
was not to be dissolved by the spell of a papal absolution. 
Lewi's of France had taken up Becket's cause, not that 
felonious clerks might go unhanged, but that an English 
kincf misrht not divide his own land with him. The Earl 
of Leicester had torn down Reginald of Cologne's altars, 
not alone because he was an orthodox Catholic, but that, 
with the help of an ambitious ecclesiasticism, he might 
break the power of the crown. Through France, through 
England, through Normandy, a combination had been 
formed for Henry's humiliation, and although the pope no 
longer sanctioned it, the purpose was deeply laid, and could 
not lightly be surrendered. 



142 Life and Times of 

Unable to strike at his rival as a spiritual outlaw, 
Lewis found a point where he was no less vulnerable in the 
jealousy of his queen and the ambition and pride of his 
sons. His aim was to separate England from its French 
dependencies. He, and perhaps Eleanor, instig£>,ted Prince 
Henry to demand after the second coronation that his 
father should divide his dominions, and make over one part 
or the other to him as an independent sovereign. The 
king of course refused. Prince Henry and his wife escaped 
to Lewis per consilium comitum et haronum Anglice et Nor- 
manni(B qui patrem suurn odio hahehant} The younger 
princes, Richard and Geoffrey, followed them ; and a coun- 
cil was held at Paris, where the Count of Flanders the 
Count of Boulogne, William the Lion, and the Earl of 
Huntingdon from Scotland, and the English and Norman 
disaffected nobles, combined with Lewis for a general attack 
upon the English king. England was to rise. Normandy 
was to rise. William was to invade Northumberland. The 
Count of Flanders was to assist the English insurgents in 
the eastern counties. Lewis himself was to lead an army 
into Normandy, where half the barons and bishops were 
ready to join him. The three English princes, embittered, 
it may be, by their mother's injuries, swore to make no 
peace with their father without consent of their allies. 

For a time it seemed as if Henry must be overwhelmed. 
Open enemies were on all sides of him. Of his professed 
friends too many were disloyal at heart. The Canterbury 
frenzy added fuel to the conflagration by bringing God 
into the field. The Earl of Norfolk and Lord Ferrars rose 
in East Anglia. Lewis and young Henry crossed the 
frontier into Normandy. The Scots poured over the Tweed 
into Northumberland. Ireland caught the contagion unin- 
vited; the greater part of the force which had remained 
there was recalled, and only a few garrisons were left. 
Had Alexander allowed the Church to lend its help, the 

1 Benedict. 



Thomas Bechet. 143 

king must have fallen ; but Alexander honorably adhered 
to his engagement at Avranches. 

The king himself remained on the continent, struggling 
as he best could against war and treason. Chief Justice de 
Luci and Humfrey de Bohun faced the Scots beyond New- 
castle, and drove them back to Berwick. In the midst of 
their success they learned that the Earl of Leicester had 
landed in Norfolk with an army of Flemings. They left 
the north to its fate. They flew back. Lord Arundel 
joined them, and the old Earl of Cornwall, who befriended 
Becket while he could, but had no sympathies with rebel- 
lion. They fell on the Flemings near Bury St. Edmunds, 
and flung them into total wreck. Ten thousand were 
killed. Leicester himself and the rest were taken, and 
scarce a man escaped to carry back the news to Grave- 
lines.-^ 

The victory in Norfolk was the first break in the cloud. 
The rebellion in England had its back broken, and waver- 
ers began to doubt, in spite of the miracles, whether God 
was on its side. Bad news, however, came from the north. 
The Scots flowed back, laying waste Cumberland and 
Northumberland with wild ferocity. At the opening of 
the summer of 1174 another army of French, Flemings, 
and insurgent English was collected at Gravelines to re- 
venge the defeat at Bury, and this time the Earl of 
Flanders and Prince Henry were to come in person at the 
head of it. 

An invasion so leAd and countenanced could only be re- 
sisted by the king in person. The barons had sworn alle- 
giance to the prince, and the more loyal of them might be 
uncertain in what direction their duties lay. Sad and 
stern, prepared for the worst, yet resolute to contend to the 
last against the unnatural coalition, Henry crossed in July 
to Southampton ; but, before repairing to London to col- 
lect his forces, he turned aside out of his road for a singular 
and touching purpose. 

1 October 16, 1173. 



144 Life and Times of 

Althongli the conspiracy against which he was fighting 
was condemned by the pope it had grown nevertheless too 
evidently out of the contest with Becket, which had ended 
so terribly. The combination of his wife and sons with his 
other enemies was something off the course of nature — 
strange, dark, and horrible. He was abler than most of 
his contemporaries, but his piety was (as with most wise 
men) a check upon his intellect. He, it is clear, did not 
share in the suspicion that the miracles at the archbishop's 
tomb were the work either of fraud or enchantment. He 
was not a person who for political reasons would affect 
emotions which he despised. He had been Becket's friend. 
Becket had been killed, in part at least, through his own 
fault; and, though he might still believe himself to have 
been essentially right in the quarrel, the miracles showed 
that the archbishop had been really a saint. A more com- 
plete expiation than the pope had enjoined might be neces- 
sary before the avenging spirit, too manifestly at work, could 
be pacified. 

From Southampton he directed his way to Canterbury, 
where the bishops had been ordered to meet him. He 
made offerings at the various churches which he passed on 
his way. On reaching Harbledown, outside the city, he 
alighted at the Chapel of St. Nicholas, and thence went-^ on 
foot to St. Dunstan's Oratory, adjoining the wall. At the 
oratory he stripped ofi^ his usual dress. He put on a hair 
penitential shirt, over which a coarse pilgrim's cloak was 
thrown ; and in this costume, with bare and soon bleeding 
feet, Henry, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of 
Normandy, and Count of Anjou, walked through the streets 
to the cathedral. Pausing at the spot where the archbishop 
had fallen, and kissing the stone, he descended into the 
crypt to the tomb, burst into tears, and flung himself on the 
ground. There, surrounded by a group of bishops, knights, 
and monks, he remained long upon his knees in silent 

1 July 12. 



Thomas Bechet. 145 

prayer. The Bishop of London said for him, what he had 
said at Avranches, that he had not commanded the murder, 
but had occasioned it by his hasty words. When the bishop 
ended, he rose, and repeated his confession with his own 
lips. He had caused the archbishop's death ; therefore he 
had come in person to acknowledge his sin, and to entreat 
the brothers of the monastery to pray for him. 

At the tomb he offered rich silks and wedges of gold. 
To the chapter he gave lands. For himself he vowed to 
erect and endow a religious house, which should be dedi- 
cated to St. Thomas. Thus amply, in the opinion of the 
monks, reconciliari 7neruit, he deserved to be forgiven. 
But the satisfaction was still incomplete. The martyr's 
injuries, he said, must be avenged on his own person. He 
threw off his cloak, knelt again, and laid his head upon the 
tomb. Each bishop and abbot present struck him five times 
with a whip. Each one of the eighty monks struck him 
thrice. Strange scene ! None can be found more charac- 
teristic of the age ; none more characteristic of Henry Plan- 
tagenet. 

The penance done, he rose and resumed his cloak ; and 
there by the tomb through the remainder of the July day, 
and through the night till morning, he remained silently 
sitting, without food or sleep. The cathedral doors were 
left open by his orders. The people of the city came freely 
to gape and stare at the singular spectacle. There was the 
terrible King Henry, who had sent the knights to kill their 
archbishop, sitting now in dust and ashes. The most in- 
genious cunning could not have devised a better method of 
winning back the affection of his subjects ; yet with no act 
of king or statesman had ingenious cunning ever less to do. 
In the morning he heard mass, and presented offerings at 
the various altars. Then he became king once more, and 
rode to London to prepare for the invader. If his humilia- 
tion was an act of vain superstition. Providence encouraged 
him in his weakness. On the day which followed it William 

10 



146 Life and Times of 

tke Lion was defeated and made prisoner at Alnwick. A 
week later came news that the army at Gravelines had 
dissolved, and that the invasion was abandoned. Delivered 
from peril at home, Henry flew back to France and flung 
Lewis back over his own frontier. St. Thomas was now 
supposed to be fighting for King Henry. Imagination be- 
comes reality when it gives to one party certainty of vic- 
tory, to the other the anticipation of defeat. By the spring 
of 1175 the great combination was dissolved. The princes 
returned to their duty ; the English and Norman rebels to 
their allegiance ; and with Alexander's mediation Henry 
and Lewis and the Count of Flanders were for a time once 
more reconciledc 



Thomas BecJcet, 147 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Though the formal canonization of Becket could not be 
accomplished with the speed which his impatient friends 
demanded, it was declared with the least delay which the 
necessary forms required. A commission which was sent 
from Rome to inquire into the authenticity of the miracles 
having reported satisfactorily, the promotion of the arch- 
bishop was immediately decreed, and the monks were able 
to pray to him without fear of possible irregularity. Due 
honor having been thus paid to the Church's champion, it 
became possible to take up again the ever-pressing problem 
of the Church's reform. 

Between the pope and the king there had never really 
been much dilFerence of opinion. They were now able to 
work harmoniously together. A successor for Becket at 
Canterbury was found in the Prior of Dover, for whose 
good sense we have a sufficient guarantee in the abhorrence 
with which he was regarded by the ardent champions of 
Church supremacy. The reformation was commenced in 
Normandy. After the ceremony at Avranches the cardinals 
who had come from Rome to receive Henry's confession held 
a council there. The resolutions arrived at show that the 
picture of the condition of the clergy left to us by Nigellus 
is not really overdrawn. It was decided that children were 
to be no more admitted to the cure of souls — a sufficient 
proof that children had been so admitted. It was decided 
that the sons of priests should not succeed to their father's 
oreferments — an evidence not only of the habits of the 
incumbents, but of the tendency of Church benefices to be- 
come hereditary. Yet more significantly the guilty bargains 



148 Life and Times of 

were forbidden by which benefices were let out to farm, 
and lay patrons presented incumbents on condition of shar- 
ing the offertory money ; while pluralist ecclesiastics, of 
whom Becket himself had been a conspicuous instance, were 
ordered to give a third, at least, of their tithes to the vicars. 
At the close of the war, in 1175, a similar council was held 
at Westminster under the new primate. Not only the 
Avranches resolutions were adopted there, but indications 
appeared that among the English clergy simony and license 
were at a yet grosser point than on the Continent. Bene- 
fices had been publicly set up to sale. The religious houses 
received money for the admission of monks and nuns. 
Priests, and even bishops, had demanded fees for the ad- 
ministration of the sacraments ; while as regarded manners 
and morals, it was evident that the priestly character sat 
lightly on the secular clergy. They carried arms ; they 
wore their hair long like laymen ; they frequented taverns 
and more questionable places ; the more reputable among 
them were sheriffs and magistrates. So far as decrees of a 
council could alter the inveterate habits of the order, a 
better state of things was attempted to be instituted. In 
the October following, Cardinal Hugezun came from Rome 
to arrange the vexed question of the liability of clerks to 
trial in the civil courts. . The customs for which Henry 
pleaded seem at that time to been substantially recognized. 
Offenders were degraded by their ordinaries and passed 
over to the secular judges. For one particular class of 
offences definite statutory powers were conceded to the 
State. The clergy were notorious violators of the forest 
laws. Deer-stealing implied a readiness to commit other 
crimes, and Cardinal Hugezun formally consented that or- 
ders should be no protection in such cases. The betrayal 
of their interests on a matter which touched so nearly the 
occupation of their lives was received by the clergy with a 
scream of indignation. Their language on the occasion is 
an illustration of what may have been observed often, be- 



Thomas Becket. 149 

fore and since, that no order of men are less respectiul to 
spiritual authority when they disapprove its decrees. 

" The aforesaid cardinal," wrote Benedict and Walter of 
Coventry, " conceded to the king the right of impleading the 
clerks of his realm under the forest laws, and of punishing 
them for taking deer. Limb of Satan that he was ! merce- 
nary satellite of the devil himself! Of a shepherd he was 
made a robber. Seeing the wolf coming, he fled away and 
left the sheep whom the supreme pontiff had committed to 
his charge." ^ 

The angry advocates of ecclesiastical license might have 
spared their passion. The laws of any country cannot be 
maintained above the level of the average intelligence of 
the people ; and in another generation the clergy would be 
free to carry their cross-bows without danger of worse con- 
sequences than a broken crown from the staff of a game- 
keeper. " Archbishop Richard," says Giraldus, " basely 
surrendered the rights which the martyr Thomas had fought 
for and won, but Archbishop Stephen recovered them." 
The blood of St. Thomas had not been shed, and the martyr 
of Canterbury had not been allowed a monopoly of wonder- 
working, that a priest should be forbidden to help himself 
to a haunch of vension on festival days. In the great 
Charter of English freedom the liberties of the Church were 
comprehended in the form, or almost in the form, in which 
Becket himself would have defined them. The barons paid 
for the support of the clergy on that memorable occasion by 
the concession of their most extravagant demands. Ben- 
efit of clergy thenceforward was permitted to throw an en- 
chanted shield, not round deer-stealers only, but round 
thieves and murderers, and finally round every villain that 
could read. The spiritual courts, under the name of liberty, 
were allowed to develop a system of tyranny and corrup- 

1 " Ecce membrum Satanoe ! ecce ipsuis Satanoe conductus satelles ! qui 
tarn subito factus de pastore raptor videns lupum venientem fugit et dimisit 
■»ve3 sibi a summo pontifice coinmissas." 



150 Life and Times of Thomas Beeket. 

tion unparalleled in the administrative annals of any time 
or country. The English laity were for three centuries 
condemned to writhe under the yoke which their own cred- 
ulous folly had imposed on them, till the spirit of Henry 
the Second at length revived, and the aged iniquity was 
brought to judgment at the Reformation. 



THE 



OXFORD COUNTER-REFORMATION.^ 

[GOOD WORDS. 1881.] 



LETTER I. 

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND FIFTY YEARS AGO. 

My DEAR . You remind me of a promise which I 

have left too long unfulfilled. We had been looking over 
some of your old family papers, and we had found among them 
a copy of the once famous Tract 90, scored over with pen- 
cil marks and interjections. The rocket which had flamed 
across the sky was now a burnt-out case. It was hard to 
believe that the whole mind of England could have been so 
agitated by expressions and ideas which had since become 
so familiar. We were made to feel how times had changed 
in the last forty years ; we had been travelling on a spiritual 
railroad, and the indifference with which we turned the 
leaves of the once terrible pamphlet was an evidence how 
far we had left behind our old traditionary landmarks. 
Mysteries which had been dismissed as superstitions at the 
Reformation, and had never since been heard of, were now 
preached again by half- the clergy, and had revolutionized 
the ritual in our churches. Every county had its Anglican 
monasteries and convents. Romanism had lifted up its head 
again. It had its hierarchy and its cardinals ; it was a power 

1 These letters were originally published before the appearance of IMr. 
Mozley's Reminiscences of the Oxford Movement. I have not found it 
necessary to make any alterations. 



152 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

in Parliament, and in the London salons. The fathers con- 
fessors were busy in our families, dictating conditions of mar- 
riages, dividing wives from husbands, and children from 
parents. 

By the side of the revival of Catholicism there was a cor- 
responding phenomenon of an opposite and no less startling 
kind. Half a century ago any one who openly questioned 
the truth of Christianity was treated as a public offender and 
was excommunicated by society. Now, while one set of men 
were brinofinof back media^valisra, science and criticism were 
assailing with impunity the authority of the Bible ; miracles 
were declared impossible ; even Theism itself was treated 
as an open question, and subjects which in our fathers' time 
were approached only with the deepest reverence and solem- 
nity were discussed among the present generation with as 
much freedom as the common problems of natural philos- 
ophy or politics. 

Both these movements began within a short distance of 
one another, and were evidently connected. You asked me 
to write down what I could recollect about their origin, 
having had, as you supposed, some special opportunities of 
knowing their history. I hesitated, partly because it is not 
agreeable to go back over our own past mistakes, partly be- 
cause I have ceased to feel particular interest in either of 
them. For myself, I am convinced that they are roads both 
of them which lead to the wrong place, and that it is better 
for us to occupy ourselves with realities than fret our minds 
about illusions. If the Church of Rome recovers power 
enough to be dangerous, it will be shattered upon the same 
rocks on which it was dashed three centuries ago. The 
Church of England may play at sacerdotalism and masque- 
rade in mediaeval garniture ; the clergy may flatter one an- 
other with notions that they can bind and loose the souls of 
their fellow-Christians, and transform the substance of the 
sacramental elements by spells and gestures ; but they will 
not at this time of day persuade intelligent men that the 



The Church of England Fifty Years Ago. 153 

bishops in their ordination gave them really supernatural 
powers. Their celebrations and processions may amuse 
for a time by their novelty, but their pretensions deserve 
essentially no more respect than those of spirit-rappers, and 
the serious forces of the world go on upon their way no more 
affected by them than if they were shadows. 

As little is it possible to hope much from the school of 
negative and scientific criticism. For what science can tell 
us of positive truth in special subjects we are infinitely 
thankful. In matters of religion it can say nothing, for it 
knows nothing. A surgeon may dissect a living body to 
discover what life consists in. The body is dead before he 
can reach the secret, and he can report only that the materi- 
als, when he has taken them to pieces and examined them, 
are merely dead matter. Critical philosophy is equally at 
a loss with Christianity. It may perhaps discover the doc- 
trines of the creed in previously existing Eastern theologies. 
It may pretend to jDrove that the sacred records were com- 
posed as human narratives are composed; that the origin 
of many of them cannot be traced ; that they are defective 
in authority; that the evidence is insufficient to justify a 
belief in the events which they relate. So far as philosophy 
can see, there may be nothing in the materials of Christian- 
ity which is necessarily and certainly supernatural. And 
yet Christianity exists, and has existed, and has been the 
most powerful spiritual force which has ever been felt 
amons: mankind. 

If I tell the story which you ask of me, therefore, I 
must tell it without sympathy, either way, in these great 
movements. I cannot, like " the sow that was washed," 
return to wallow in repudiated superstition. If I am to be 
edified, on the other hand, I must know what is true in 
religion ; and I do not care about negations. In this re- 
spect I am unfit for the task which you impose on me. It 
is perhaps, however, occasionally well to take stock of our 
mental experience. The last forty or fifty years will be 



154 Tlie Ojcford Counter- Reformation. 

memorable hereafter in the history of English opinion. 
The number of those who recollect the beginnings of the 
Oxford revival is shrinking fast ; and such of us as survive 
may usefully note down their personal recollections as a 
contribution, so far as it goes, to the general narrative. It 
is pleasant, too, to recall the figures of those who played 
the chief parts in the drama. If they had not been men 
of ability they could not have produced the revolution that 
was brought about by them. Their personal characters 
were singularly interesting. Two of them were distinctly 
men of real genius. My own brother was at starting the 
foremost of the party ; the flame, therefore, naturally burnt 
hot in my own immediate environment. The phrases and 
formulas of Anglo-Catholicism had become household words 
in our family before I understood coherently what the stir 
and tumult was about. 

We fancy that we are free agents. We are conscious of 
what we do ; we are not conscious of the causes which make 
us do it ; and therefore we imagine that the cause is in our- 
selves. The Oxford leaders believed that they were fight- 
ing against the spirit of the age. They were themselves 
most completely the creatures of their age. It was one of 
those periods when Conservative England had been seized 
with a passion for Reform. Parliament was to be reformed; 
the municipal institutions were to be reformed; there was 
to be an end of monopolies and privileges. The constitu- 
tion was to be cut in pieces and boiled in the Benthamite 
caldron, from which it was to emerge in immortal youth. 
In a reformed State there needed a reformed Church. 
My brother and his friends abhorred Bentham and all his 
works. The Establishment in its existing state was too 
weak to do battle with the new enemy. Protestantism was 
the chrysalis of Liberalism. The Church, therefore, was to 
be unprotestantized. The Reformation, my brother said, was 
a bad setting of a broken limb. The limb needed breaking 
a second time, and then it would be equal to its business. 



The Church of England Fifty Years Ago. 155 

My brother exaggerated the clanger, and underestimated 
the strength which existing institutious and customs possess 
so long as they are left undisturbed. Before he and his 
friends undertook the process of reconstruction, the Church 
was perhaps in the healthiest condition which it had ever 
known. Of all the constituents of human society, an estab- 
lished religion is that which religious men themselves should 
most desire to be let alone, and which people in general 
when they are healthy-minded are most sensitive about al- 
lowing to be touched. It is the sanction of moral obliga- 
tion. It gives authority to the commandments, creates a 
fear of doing wrong, and a sense of responsibility for doing 
it. To raise a doubt about a creed established by general 
acceptance is a direct injury to the general welfare. Dis- 
cussion about it is out of place, for only bad men wish to 
question the rule of life which religion commands ; and a 
creed or ritual is not a series of propositions or a set of out- 
ward observances of which the truth or fitness may be prop- 
erly argued ; it grows with the life of a race or nation ; it 
takes shape as a living germ develops into an organic body ; 
and as you do not ask of a tree, is it true., but is it alive, so 
with an established Church or system of belief you look to 
the work which it is doing. If it is teaching men to be 
brave and upright, and honest and just ; if it is making 
them noble-minded, careless of their selfish interests, and 
loving only what is good, the truth of it is proved by evidence 
better than argument, and idle persons may properly be 
prohibited from raising unprofitable questions about it. 
Where there is life, truth is present, not as in propositions, 
but as an active force, and that is all which practical men 
need desire. 

Thus in stern and serious ages, the religion of every coun- 
try has been under the charge of the law, and to deny it has 
been treated as a crime. When the law has become re- 
laxed, public opinion takes its place, and, though offenders 
are no longer punished, society excommunicates them. If 



156 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

religion were matter of speculation, they would be let 
alone ; but so long as it is a principle of conduct, the com- 
mon sense of mankind refuses to allow it to be trifled with. 

Public opinion was in this sense the guardian of Chris- 
tianity in England sixty years ago. Orthodox dissent was 
permitted. Doubts about the essentials of the faith were 
not permitted. In the last century, in certain circles of soci- 
ety, scepticism had for a time been fashionable ; but the 
number of professed unbelievers was never great, and infidel- 
ity was always a reproach. The Church administration had 
been slovenly ; but in the masses of the people the convic- 
tions which they had inherited were still present, and were 
blown into flame easily by the Methodist revival. The 
Establishment followed the example and grew energetic 
a^ain. The French Revolution had friorhtened all classes 
out of advanced ways of thinking, and society in town and 
country was Tory in politics, and determined to allow no 
innovations upon the inherited faith. It was orthodox 
without being theological. Doctrinal problems were little 
thought of. Religion, as taught in the Church of England, 
meant moral obedience to the will of God. The speculative 
part of it was accepted because it was assumed to be true. 
The creeds were reverentially repeated ; but the essential 
thing was practice. People went to church on Sunday to 
learn to be good, to hear the commandments repeated to 
them for the thousandth time, and to see them written in 
gilt letters over the communion-table. About the powers 
of the keys, the real presence or the metaphysics of doctrine, 
no one was anxious, for no one thought about them. It was 
not worth while to waste time over questions which had no 
bearing on conduct, and could be satisfactorily disposed of 
only by sensible indifference. 

As the laity were, so were the clergy. They were gen- 
erally of superior culture, manners, and character. The 
pastor in the " Excursion " is a favorable but not an ex- 
ceptional specimen of a large class among them. Others 



The Church of England Fifty Years Ago. 157 

were country gentlemen of the best kind, continually in 
contact with the people, but associating on equal terms 
with the squires and the aristocracy. The curate of the last 
century, who dined in the servants' hall and married the 
ladies'-maid, had long disai)[)eared, if he had ever existed 
outside popular novels. Not a specimen of him could have 
been found in the island. The average English incumbent 
of fifty years ago was a man of private fortune, the younger 
brother of the landlord perhaps, and holding the family 
living ; or it might be the landlord himself, his advowson 
being part of the estate. His professional duties were his 
services on Sunday, funerals and weddings on week-days, 
and visits when needed among the sick. In other respects 
he lived like his neighbors, distinguished from them only by 
a black coat and white neckcloth, and greater watchfulness 
over his words and actions. He farmed his own glebe ; he 
kept horses ; he shot and hunted moderately, and mixed ii] 
general society. He was generally a magistrate ; he attended 
public meetings, and his education enabled him to take a 
leading part in county business. His wife and daughters 
looked after the poor, taught in the Sunday-school, and 
managed the penny clubs and clothing clubs. He himself 
was spoken of in the parish as " the master " — the person 
who was responsible for keeping order there, and who knew 
how to keep it. The laborers and the farmers looked up 
to him. The " family " in the great house could not look 
down upon him. If he was poor it was still his pride to 
bring up his sons as gentlemen ; and economies were cheer- 
fully submitted to at home to give them a start in life — at 
tlie university, or in the army or navy. 

Our own household was a fair representative of the order. 
My father wa^ rector of the parish. He was archdeacon, 
he was justice of the peace. He had a moderate fortune of 
his own, consisting chiefly in land, and he belonged, there- 
fore, to the " landed interest." Most of the magistrates' 
work of the neighborhood passed through his hands. If 



158 The Oxford Counter- Reformation. 

anything was amiss, it was his advice which was most 
sought after, and I remember his being called upon to lay a 
troublesome ghost. In his younger days he had been a hard 
rider across country. His children knew him as a contin- 
ually busy, useful man of the world, a learned and culti- 
vated antiquary, and an accomplished artist. My brothers 
and I were excellently educated, and were sent to school 
and college. Our spiritual lessons did not go beyond the 
Catechism. We were told that our business in life was 
to work and to make an honorable position for ourselves. 
About doctrine, Evangelical or Catholic, I do not think that 
in my early boyhood I ever heard a single word, in church 
or out of it. The institution had drifted into the condition 
of what I should call moral health. It did not instruct us 
in mysteries, it did not teach us to make religion a special 
object of our thoughts ; it taught us to use religion as a 
light by which to see our way along the road of duty. 
Without the sun our eyes would be of no use to us ; but if we 
look at the sun we are simply dazzled, and can see neither 
it nor anything else. It is precisely the same with theolog- 
ical speculations. If the beacon lamp is shining, a man of 
healthy mind will not discuss the composition of the flame. 
Enough if it shows him how to steer and keep clear of 
shoals and breakers. To this conception of the thing we 
had practically arrived. Doctrinal controversies were sleep- 
ing. People went to church because they liked it, because 
they knew that they ought to go, and because it was the 
custom. They had received the Creeds from their fathers, 
and doubts about them had never crossed their minds. 
Christianity had wrought itself into the constitution of their 
natures. It was a necessary part of the existing order of 
the universe, as little to be debated about as the movements 
of the planets or the changes of the seasons. 

Such the Church of England was in the country 4is- 
tricts before the Tractarian movement. It was not perfect, 
but it was doing its work satisfactorily. It is easier to alter 



The Church of Ejiglancl Fifty Years Ago. 159 

than to improve, and the beginning of change, like the be- 
ginning of strife, is like the letting out of water. Jupiter, 
in Lessing's fable, was invited to mend a fault in human 
nature. The fault was not denied, but Jupiter said that man 
was a piece of complicated machinery, and if he touched a 
part he might probably spoil the whole. 

But a new era was upon us. The miraculous nineteenth 
cejitury was coming of age, and all the world was to be re- 
made. Widely as the improvers of their species differed as 
to the methods to be followed, they agreed in this, that im- 
provement there was to be. The Radicals wanted to make 
an end of Toryism and antiquated ideas. Young Oxford 
discovered that if the Radicals were to be fought with suc- 
cessfully the old weapons would not answer, and something 
was wanted " deeper and truer than satisfied the last cen- 
tury." Our English-speaking forefathers in the last cen- 
tury it seems were poor creatures, yet they had contrived 
to achieve considerable success in most departments of hu- 
man affairs. They founded empires ; they invented steam- 
engines ; they produced a Chatham, a Clive, a AVarren 
Hastings, a Washington, a Franklin, a Nelson — a longer 
list of illustrious names than there is need to mention. 
Their literature might not equal the Elizabethan, but it 
was noteworthy in its way. A period which had produced 
Pope and Swift, Sterne and Fielding, Johnson and Gold- 
smith, Hume and Gibbon, Butler and Berkeley, was not 
so entirely shallow. Men had fixed beliefs in those days. 
Over the pool of uncertainties in which our own generation 
is floundering there was then a crust of undisturbed convic- 
tion on which they could plant their feet and step out like 
men. Their thoughts, if not deep, were clear and precise ; 
their actions were bold and strong. A good many years, 
perhaps a good many hundreds of years, will have to pass 
before as sound books will be written again, or deeds done 
with as much pith and mettle in them. " The something 
deeper and truer " would be more easily desired than found, 



160 The Oxford Countcr-Beforriiation. 

but the words well convey the inflation with which the 
Catholic revivalists were going to their work. Our age 
perhaps has a mistaken idea of its consequence. All its 
geese are swans, and every new enemy is a monster never 
before heard of. The " Edinburgh Review " and Brough- 
am, and Mackintosh and the Reform Ministry, and Low 
Church philosophy and the London University were not so 
very terrible. But as the windmills were giants to the 
knight of La Mancha, so the Whigs of those days were to 
young Oxford apostles the forerunners of Antichrist. In- 
fidelity was rushing in upon us. Achilles must rise from 
his tent, and put on his celestial armor. The Church must 
reassert herself in majesty to smite and drive back the proud 
ao^^ressive intellect. 

The excitement was unnecessary. The sun was not ex- 
tinguished because a cloud was over its face. Custom, tra- 
dition, conservative instinct, and natural reverence for the 
truth handed down to it, would have sufficed more than 
amply to meet such danger as then existed. In a little 
while "The Edinburgh" became the most orthodox of jour- 
nals, and Brougham an innocent apostle of natural theology. 
Liberalism let well alone would have subsided into its place. 
But it was not so to be. Achilles was roused in his wrath ; 
and the foe whom he was to destroy was roused in turn, 
and has not been destroyed. The two parties were the 
counterparts one of the other ; each was possessed with 
the same conceit of superiority to their fathers and grand- 
fathers ; each in its way supposed that it had a mission to 
reconstruct society. The Radicals believed in the rights 
of man, the progress of the species, and intellectual eman- 
cipation. To them our ancestors were children, and the 
last-born generation were the ancient sages, for they had 
inherited the accumulated experience of all past time. I2s- 
tablished institutions represented only ignorance. The 
older they were, the less fitted they were, from the nature 
of the case, for modern exigencies. 



The Church of England Fifty Years Ago. 161 

In talk of this kind there was one part sense and nine 
parts nonsense. The Oxford School confronted it with a 
position equally extravagant. In their opinion truth was 
to be found only in the earliest fathers of the Church ; the 
nearer that we could reach back to them, the purer we 
should find the stream. The bottom of the mischief was 
the modern notion of liberty, the supposed right of men to 
think for themselves and act for themselves. Their business 
was to submit to authority, and the seat of authority was 
the Church. The false idea had made its appearance in 
England first under the Plantagenet kings, in the Constitu- 
tions of Clarendon, the mortmain and premunire statutes. 
It had produced the Reformation, it had produced Puritan- 
ism and regicide. It now threatened the destruction of all 
that good men ought to. value. The last century had been 
blind ; our own fathers had been blind ; but the terrible 
reality could no longer be concealed. The arch enemy was 
at the door. The Test Act was repealed. Civil disabilities 
were taken off Dissenters. Brougham had announced that 
henceforth no man was to suffer for his religious opinions. 
Irish bishoprics were being suppressed. Lord Grey had 
warned the bishops in England to set their houses in order, 
and was said to have declared in private that the Church 
was a mare's nest. Catholic emancipation was equally mon- 
strous. Romanists, according to the theory as it then stood, 
might be Churchmen abroad, but they were Dissenters in 
England and Ireland. War was to be declared at once, 
war to the knife against the promoters of these enormities. 
History was reconstructed for us. I had learnt, like other 
Protestant children, that the pope was Antichrist, and that 
Gregory VII. had been a special revelation of that being. 
I was now taught that Gregory VII. was a saint. I had 
been told to honor the Reformers. The Reformation became 
the great schism, Cranmer a traitor, and Latimer a vulgar 
ranter. IMilton was a name of horror, and Charles I. was 
canonized and spoken of as the holy and blessed martyr St. 
11 



162 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

Charles. I asked once whether the Church of England was 
able properly to create a saint. St. Charles was immedi- 
ately pointed out to me. Similarly we were to admire the 
non-jurors, to speak of James III. instead of the Pretender ; 
to look for Antichrist, not in the pope, but in Whigs and 
revolutionists and all their works. Henry of Exeter, so 
famous in those days, announced once in my hearing that 
the Court of Rome had regretted the Emancipation Act as 
a victory of latitudiuarianism. I suppose he believed what 
he was saying. 

Under the sad conditions of the modern world the Church 
of England was the rock of salvation. The Church, needing 
only to be purged of the elements of Protestantism which 
had stolen into her, could then, with her apostolic succes- 
sion, her bishops, her priests, and her sacraments, rise up, 
and claim and exercise her lawful authority over all persons 
in all departments. She would have but to show herself in 
her proper majesty, as in the great days when she fought 
with kings and emperors, and now, as then, the powers of 
darkness would spread their wings and fly away to their own 
place. 

These were the views which we used to hear in our home- 
circle when the Tracts were first beginning. We had been 
bred, all of us, Tories of the old school. This was Toryism 
in ecclesiastical costume. My brother was young, gifted, 
brilliant, and enthusiastic. No man is ever good for much 
who has not been carried off his feet by enthusiasm between 
twenty and thirt}" ; but it needs to be bridled and bitted, and 
my brother did not live to be taught the difference between 
fact and speculation. Taught it he would have been, if 
time had been allowed him. No one ever recognized facts 
more loyally than he when once he saw them. This I am 
sure of, that when the intricacies of the situation pressed 
upon him, when it became clear to him that if his concep- 
tion of the Church, and of its rights and position was ti'ue 
at all, it was not true of the Church of England in which 



The Church of E7igland Fifty Years Ago. 1G3 

he was born, and that he must renounce his theory as vis- 
ionary or join another communion, he would not have " min- 
imized " the Roman doctrines that they might be more easy 
for him to swallow, or have explained away plain proposi- 
tions till they meant anything or nothing. Whether he 
would have swallowed them or not I cannot say ; I was not 
eighteen when he died, and I do not so much as form an 
opinion about it ; but his course, whatever it was, would 
have been direct and straightforward ; he was a man far 
more than a theologian ; and if he had gone, he would have 
gone with his whole heart and conscience, unassisted by sub- 
tleties and nice distinctions. It is, however, at least equally 
possible that he would not have gone at all. He might 
have continued to believe that all authority was derived 
from God; that God would have His will obeyed in this 
world, and that the business of princes and ministers was to 
learn what that will was. But prophets have passed for 
something as well as priests in making God's will known ; 
and Established Church priesthoods have not been gener- 
ally on particularly good terms with prophets. The only 
occasion on which the two orders are said to have been in 
harmony was when the prophets prophesied lies, and the 
priests bore rule in their name. 

The terminus, however, towards which he and his friends 
were moving had not come in sight in my brother's life- 
time. He went forward, hesitating at nothing, taking the 
fences as they came, passing lightly over them all, and sweep- 
ing his friends along with him. He had the contempt of an 
intellectual aristocrat for private judgment and the rights of 
a man. In common things a person was a fool who pre- 
ferred his own judgment to that of an expert. Why, he 
asked, should it be wiser to follow private judgment in re- 
ligion? As to rights, the right of wisdom was to rule, and 
the right of ignorance was to be ruled. But he belonged 
himself to the class whose business was to order ratlier 
than obey. If his own bishop had iuterfered with him, 



164 Tlie Oxford Countcr-Befonnation. 

his theory of episcopal authority would have been found 
inai:>plicable in that particular instance. 

So the work went on. The Church was not to be a Wit- 
ness only to religious truth ; it was first to repent of its sins, 
disown its Protestantism, and expel the Calvanistic poison ; 
then it was to control politics and govern all opinion. Mur- 
murs arose from time to time among the disciples. If the 
Keformation was to be called an act of schism, were we not 
on the road back to Rome ? Shrewd observers were heard 
to say that the laity would never allow the Church of Eng- 
land to get on stilts. The Church was grafted on upon the 
State, and the State would remain master, let Oxford say what 
it pleased. But the party of the movement were to grow 
and fulfil their destiny. They were to j)roduce results of in- 
calculable consequence, yet results exactly opposite to what 
they designed and anticipated. They were to tear up the 
fibres of custom by which the Establishment as they found 
it was maintaining its quiet influence. They were to raise 
discussions round its doctrines, which degraded accepted 
truths into debatable opinions. They were to alienate the 
conservative instincts of the country, fill the clergy once 
more with the conceit of a priesthood, and convert them 
into' pilot fish for the Roman missionaries. Worst of all, 
by their attempts to identify Christianity with the Catholic 
system, they provoked doubts, in those whom they failed to 
persuade, about Christianity itself. But for the Oxford 
movement, scepticism might have continued a harmless spec- 
ulation of a few philosophers. By their perverse alterna- 
tive, either the Church or nothing, they forced honest men to 
say, Let it be nothing, then, rather than what we know to 
be a lie. A vague misgiving now saturates our popular 
literature ; our lecture rooms and pulpits echo with it ; and 
the Established religion, protected no longer from irrever- 
ent questions, is driven to battle for its existence among the 
common subjects of secular investigation. Truth will pre- 



The Church of England Fifty Years Ago. 1G5 

vail in the end, and the trial, perhaps, must have come at 
one time or other. But it need not have come when it did. 
There might have been peace in our days, if Achilles had 
remained in his tent. 

You shall have the story of it all in the following letters. 



166 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 



LETTER II. 

THE TRACTARIANS. 

My dear . I have told you that the Tractarians' 

object, so far as they understood themselves, was to raise 
up the Church to resist the revolutionary tendency which 
they conceived to have set in with the Reform Bill ; that 
the effect of their work was to break the back of the resist- 
ing power which the Church already possessed, and to feed 
the fire which they hoped to extinguish. I go on to explain 
in detail what I mean. 

When I went into residence at Oxford my brother was 
no longer alive. He had been abroad almost entirely for 
three or four years before his death ; and although the at- 
mosphere at home was full of the new opinions, and I heard 
startling things from time to time on Transubstantiation and 
suchlike, he had little to do with my direct education. I 
had read at my own discretion in my father's library. My 
own small judgment had been satisfied by Newton that the 
Pope was the Man of Sin ; and Davison, to whom I was 
sent for a correction, had not removed the impression. I 
knew the " Fairy Queen " pretty well, and had understood 
who and what was meant by the False Duessa. I read 
Sharon Turner carefully, and also Gibbon, and had thus 
unconsciously been swallowing antidotes to Catholic doc- 
trine. Of evangelical books properly so called I had seen 
nothing. Dissent in all its forms was a crime in our house. 
My father was too solid a man to be carried off his feet by 
the Oxford enthusiasm, but he was a High Churchman of 
the old school. The Church itself he regarded as part of 



The Tractarians. 167 

the constitution ; and the Prayer-book as an Act of Parlia- 
ment which only folly or disloyalty could quarrel with. 
My brother's notion of the evangelical clergy in the Estab- 
lishment must have been taken from some unfortunate 
specimens. He used to speak of them as " fellows who 
turned up the whites of their eyes, and said LawdP We 
had no copy of the " Pilgrim's Progress " in the house. 
I never read it till after I had grown up, and I am sorry 
that I did not make earlier acquaintance with it. Specula- 
tions about the Church and the sacraments went into my 
head, but never much into my heart ; and I fancy, perhaps 
idly, that I might have escaped some trials and some mis- 
fortunes if my spiritual imagination had been allowed food 
which would have agreed with it. 

In my first term at the university, the controversial fires 
were beginning to blaze, but not as yet hotly. The author- 
ities had not taken the alarm, but there was much talk and 
excitement, and neither the education nor the discipline of 
the place was benefited by it. The attention of the heads 
and tutors was called off from their proper business. The 
serious undergraduates divided into parties, and the measure 
with which they estimated one another's abilities was not 
knowledge or industry, but the opinions which they severally 
held. The neo-Catholic youths thought themselves espe- 
cially clever, and regarded Low Churchmen and Liberals as 
fools. It was unfortunate, for the state of Oxford was cry- 
ing out for reform of a different kind. The scheme of 
teaching for the higher class of men was essentially good, 
perhaps as good as it could be made ; incomparably better 
than the universal knowledge methods which have taken its 
place. But the idle or dull man had no education at all. 
His three or four years were spent in forgetting what he had 
learnt at school. The degree examination was got over by 
a memoria technica., and three months' cram with a private 
tutor. We did pretty much what we liked. There was 
much dissipation, and the whole manner of life was need- 



1G8 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

lessly extravagant. We were turned loose at eighteen, 
pleasures tempting us on all sides, the expense of indulgence 
being the only obstacle ; and the expense for the first year 
or two was kept out of sight by the eagerness of the trades- 
men to give us credit. No dean or tutor ever volunteered 
to help our inexperience. The prices which we paid for 
everything were preposterous. The cost of living might 
have been reduced to half what it was if the college authori- 
ties would have supplied the students on the co-operative 
system. But they would take no trouble, and their own 
charges were on the same extravagant scale. The wretched 
novice was an object of general plunder till he had learnt 
how to take care of himself. I remember calculating that I 
could have lived at a boarding-house on contract, with every 
luxury which I had in college, at a reduction of fifty per 
cent. In all this there was room and to spare for reforming 
energy, and it may be said that the administration of the 
university was the immediate business of the leading mem- 
bers — a business, indeed a duty, much more immediate 
than the unprotestantizing of the Church of England. But 
there was no leisure, there was not even a visible desire to 
meddle with concerns so vulgar. Famous as the Tractarian 
leaders were to become, their names are not connected with 
a single effort to improve the teaching at Oxford or to mend 
its manners. Behind the larger conflict which they raised, 
that duty was left untouched for many years ; it was taken 
up ultimately by the despised Liberals, who have not done 
it well, but have at least accomplished something, and have 
won the credit which was left imprudently within their 
reach. 

The state of things which I found on coming up was, 
thus, not favorable to the proper work of the place. In 
general there was far too little intercourse between the 
elder and the younger men. The difference of age was not 
really very great, but they seldom met, except in lecture- 
rooms. If an undergraduate now and then breakfasted 



The Tractarians. 169 

with his tutor, the undergraduate was shy, and the tutor 
was obliged to maiutaiu by distance and dignity of manner 
the superiority which he might have forfeited if he allowed 
himself to be easy and natural. I myself, for my brother's 
sake, was in some degree an exception. I saw something 
from the first of the men of whom the world was talking. 
I might have seen more, but I did not make the most of my 
opportunities. I wished to be a disciple. I thought I was 
a disciple. But somehow I could never feel in my heart 
that what they were about was of the importance of which 
it seemed to be, and I was little more than a curious and 
interested spectator. 

Nor, with two exceptions, were the chiefs of the move- 
ment personally impressive to me. Isaac Williams I had 
known as a boy. He was an early friend of my brother's, 
and spent a vacation or two at my father's house before I 
went to school. His black brilliant eyes, his genial laugh, 
the skill and heartiness with which he threw himself into 
our childish amusements, the inexhaustible stock of stories 
with which he held us spell-bound for hours, had endeared 
him to every one of us ; and at Oxford to dine now and then 
with four or five others in Williams's rooms was still one of 
the greatest pleasures which I had. He was serious, but 
never painfully so; and though his thoughts ran almost en- 
tirely in theological channels, they rose out of the soil of his 
own mind, pure and sparkling as the water from a mountain 
spring. He was a poet, too, and now and then could rise 
into airy sweeps of really high imagination. There is an 
image in the " Baptistery " describing the relations between 
the actions of men here in this world and the eternity which 
lies before them, grander than the finest of Keble's, or even 
of Wordsworth's : — 

Ice-chained in its headlong tract 
Have I seen a cataract, 
All tliron<:jhont a wintry noon, 
Hanging in the silent moon ; 



170 The Oxford Coiintcr-Bcformation. 

All throughout a sunbright even, 
Like the sapphire gate of Heaven; 
Spray and wave, and drii:)pings frore, 
For a hundred feet and more 
Caught in air, there to remain 
Bound in winter's crystal cliain. 
All above still silent sleeps. 
While in the transparent deeps, 
Far below the current creeps. 
Thus, methought men's actions here, 
In their headlong full career, 
"Were passing into adamant ; 
Hopes and fears, love, hate, and want. 
And the thoughts, like shining spray, 
Which above their pathway play. 
Standing in the eye of day. 
In the changeless heavenly noon. 
Things done here beneath the moon. 

Fault may be found with the execution in this passage, 
but the conception is poetry of the very highest order. 
But Williams was of quiet, unobtrusive spirit. He had 
neither the confidence nor the commandinfj nature which 
could have formed or led a party. The triumvirs who 
became a national force, and gave its real character to the 
Oxford movement, were Keble, Pusey, and John Henry- 
Newman. Newman himself was the moving power ; the 
two others were powers also, but of inferior mental strength. 
Without the third, they would have been known as men 
of genius and learning ; but their personal influence would 
have been limited to and have ended with themselves. 
Of Pusey I knew but little, and need not do more than 
mention him. Of Keble I can only venture to say a few 
words. 

He had left residence at the time I speak of, but the 
" Christian Year " had made him famous. He was often in 
Oxford as Professor of Poetry, and I was allowed to see 
him. Cardinal Newman has alluded in his " Apologia " to 
the reverence which was felt for Keble. He is now an 



1 



Tlic Tractarians. 171 

acknowledged Saint of the English Church, admired and 
respected even by those who disagree with his theology. 
A college has been founded in commemoration of him which 
bears his name ; and the " Christian Year " itself has passed 
through more than a hundred editions, and is a household 
word in every family of the Anglican Episcopal communion, 
both at home and in America. It seems presumptuous to 
raise a doubt about the fitness of a recognition so marked 
and so universal. But the question is not of Keble's piety 
or genuineness of character. Both are established beyond 
the reach of cavil, and it would be absurd and ungracious to 
depreciate them. The intellectual and literary quality of 
his work, however, is a fair subject of criticism ; and I am 
heretical enough to believe that, although the " Christian 
Year " will always hold a high place in religious poetry, it 
owes its extraordinary popularity to temporary and accidental 
causes. Books which are immediately successful, are those 
which catch and reflect the passing tones of opinion — all- 
absorbing while they last, but from their nature subject to 
change. The mass of men know little of other times or 
other ways of thinking than their own. Their minds are 
formed by the conditions of the present hour. Their great- 
est man is he who for the moment expresses most completely 
their own sentiments, and represents human life to them 
from their own point of view. The point of view shifts, 
conditions alter, fashions succeed fashions, and opinions 
opinions ; and having ourselves lost the clue, we read the 
writings which delighted our great-grandfathers with won- 
der at their taste. Each generation produces its own proph- 
ets, and great contemporary fame, except in a few extraor- 
dinary instances, is revenged by an undeserved completeness 
of neglect. 

Very different in general is the reception of the works of 
true genius. A few persons appreciate them from the first. 
To the many they seem flavorless and colorless, deficient in 
all the qualities which for the moment are most admired. 



172 Titc O.rford Countcr-Rr formation. 

They pass unnoticed amidst the meteors by which they are 
surrounded and eclipsed. But the meteors pass and they 
remain, and are seen gradually to be no vanishing coruscations, 
but new fixed stars, sources of genuine light, shining serenely 
forever in the intellectual sky. They link the ages one to 
another in a common humanity. Virgil and Horace lived 
nearly two thousand years ago, and belonged to a society of 
which the outward form and fashion have utterly perished. 
But Virgil and Horace do not grow old, because while 
society changes men continue, and we recognize in read- 
ing them that the same heart beat under the toga which 
we feel in our own breasts. In the Roman Empire, too, 
there were contemporary popularities ; men who were wor- 
shipped as gods, whose lightest word was treasured as a pre- 
cious jewel — on whose breath millions hung expectant, who 
had temples built in their honor, who in their day were a 
power in the world. These are gone, while Horace remains, 
— gone, dwindled into shadows. They were men, perhaps, 
of real worth, though of less than their admirers supposed, 
and they are now laughed at and moralized over in history 
as detected idols. As it was then, so it is now, and always 
will be. More copies of " Pickwick " were sold in five 
years than of " Hamlet " in two hundred. Yet " Hamlet " 
will last as long as the " Iliad ; " " Pickwick," delightful as 
it is to us, will be unreadable to our great-grandchildren. 
The most genial caricature ceases to interest when the thing 
caricatured has ceased to be. 

I am not comparing the " Christian Year " to Pickwick, 
but there are fashions in religion as there are fixshions in 
other thino;s. The Puritans would have found in it the 
savor of the mystic Babylon. We cannot tell what Eng- 
lish thought will be on these subjects in another century, 
but we may know if we are modest that it will not be 
identical with ours. Keble has made himself a name in 
history which will not be forgotten, and he will be remem- 
bered always as a person of singular piety, of inflexible 



The Triidarians. I'^S 

integrity, and entire indifference to what is called fame or 
worldly advantages. He possessed besides, in an exceptional 
decrree, the gift of expressing himself in the musical form 
which is called poetical. It is a form into which human 
thought naturally throws itself when it becomes emotional. 
It is'the only form adequate to the expression of high intel- 
lectual passions. However powerful the intellect, however 
generous the heart, this particular faculty can alone convey 
to others what is passing in them, or give to spiritual beauty 
a body which is beautiful also. The poetic faculty thus 
secures to those who have it the admiration of every person ; 
but it is to be remembered also that if the highest things can 
alone be fitly spoken of in poetry, all poetry is not neces- 
sarily of the highest things ; and if it can rise to the grand- 
est subjects, it can lend its beauty also to the most common- 
place. The prima donna wields the spell of an enchantress, 
though the words which she utters are nonsense ; and poetry 
can make diamonds out of glass, and gold out of ordinary 
metal. Keble was a representative of the devout mind of 
England. Religion, as he grew to manhood, was becoming 
self-conscious. It was passing out of its normal and healthy 
condition as the authoritative teacher of obedience to the 
commandments, into active anxiety about the speculative 
doctrines on which its graces were held to depend. Here, 
as in all other directions, the mental activity of the age was 
making itself felt. The evangelical movement was one 
symptom of it. The revival of sacramentalism was another, 
and found a voice in Keble. But this is all. We look in 
vain to him for any insight into the complicated problems 
of humanity, or for any sympathy with the passions which 
are the pulses of human life. With the Prayer-book for his 
guide, he has provided us with a manual of religious senti- 
ment corresponding to the Christian theory as taught by tlie 
Church of England Prayer-book, beautifully expressed in 
lani^uage which everyone can understand and remember. 
High Churchmanship had been hitherto dry and formal ; 



174 The Oxford Countcr-Eeformation. 

Keble carried into it the emotions of Evangelicalism, while 
he avoided angry collision with Evangelical opinions. Thus 
all parties could find much to admire in him, and little to 
suspect. English religious poetry was generally weak — 
was not, indeed, poetry at all. Here was something which 
in its kind was excellent ; and every one who was really re- 
ligious, or wished to be religious, or even outwardly and from 
habit professed himself and believed himself to be a Christian, 
found Keble's verses chime in his heart like church bells. H 

The " Christian Year," however, could be all this, and 
yet notwithstanding it could be poetry of a particular period, 
and not for all time. Human nature remains the same ; 
but religion alters. Christianity has taken many forms. In 
the early Church it had the hues of a hundred heresies. 
It developed in the successive councils. It has been Roman, 
it has been Greek, it has been Anglican, Lutheran, Calvin- 
ist, Arminian. It has adjusted itself to national character- 
istics ; it has grown with the growth of general knowledge. 
Keble himself, in his latest edition, is found keeping pace 
with the progress of the times, and announcing that the 
hand as well as the heart receives the mystic presence in 
the Eucharist. He began to write for Church people as 
they were sixty years ago. The Church of England has 
travelled far since 1820. The " Highest" rector then alive 
would have gone into convulsions if his curate had spoken 
to him about " celebrating " mass. The most advanced 
Biblical critic would have closed the Speaker's Commentary 
with dismay or indignation. Changed opinions will bring 
change of feelings, and fresh poets to set the feelings to 
music. The " Christian Year " has reigned without a rival 
through two generations, but " the rhymes " are not of the 
powerful sort which will " outlive the Pyramids," and the 
qualities which have given them their immediate influence 
will equally forbid their immortality. 

The limitations of Keble's poetry were visible in a still 
higher degree in himself. He was not far-seeing ; his mind 



Tlie Tractarians. 175 

moved in the groove of a single order of ideas. He could 
not place himself in the position of persons who disagreed 
with him, and thus he could never see the strong points of 
their arguments. Particular ways of thinking he dismissed 
as wicked, although in his summary condemnation he might 
be striking some of the ablest and most honest men in Eu- 
rope. If he had not been Keble he would liave been called 
(treason though it be to write the words) narrow-minded. 
Circumstances independent of himself could alone have 
raised him into a leader of a party. For the more deli- 
cate functions of such an office he was constitutionally unfit, 
and when appealed to for advice and assistance by disciples 
who were in difficulties his answers were beside the purpose. 
He could not give to others what he did not himself possess. 
Plato, in the Dialogue of the lo, describes an ingenious 
young Athenian searching desperately for some one who 
would teach him to be wise. Failing elsewhere, he goes 
to the poets. Those, he thought, who could say such fine 
things in their verses would be able to tell him in prose 
what wisdom consisted in. Their conversation unfortu- 
nately proved as profitless as that of the philosophers ; and 
the youth concluded that the poetry came from divine in- 
spiration, and that when off the sacred tripod they were but 
common men. Disappoiutment could not chill the admira- 
tion which the inquirer would continue to feel for so ven- 
erable a teacher as Keble, but of practical light that would 
be useful to him he often gathered as little as the Athenian. 
Even as a poet Keble was subjective only. He had no 
variety of note, and nothing which was not in harmony 
with his own theological school had intellectual interest 
for him. 

To his immediate friends he was genial, affectionate, and 
possibly instructive, but he had no faculty for winning the 
unconverted. If he was not bigoted he was intensely preju- 
diced. If you did not agree with him there was something 
morally wrong with you, and your " natural man " was pro- 



176 The Oxford Counter-Bcformation. 

voked into resistance. To speak habitually with authority- 
does not necessarily indicate an absence of humility, but 
does not encourage the growth of that quality. If there 
had been no " movement," as it was called, if Keble had 
remained a quiet country clergyman, unconscious that he 
was a great man, and uncalled on to guide the opinions of 
his age, he would have commanded perhaps more enduring 
admiration. The knot of followers who specially attached 
themselves to him show traces of his influence in a dispo- 
sition not only to think the views which they hold sound in 
themselves, but to regard those who think differently as 
their intellectual inferiors. Keble was incapable of vanity 
in the vulgar sense. But there was a subtle self-sufficiency 
in him which has come out more distinctly in his school. 

I remember an instance of Keble's narrowness extremely 
characteristic of him. A member of a family with which he 
had been intimate had adopted Liberal opinions in theology. 
Keble probably did not know what those opinions were, but 
regarded this person as an apostate who had sinned against 
light. He came to call one day when the erring brother 
happened to be at home ; and learning that he was in the 
house, he refused to enter, and remained sitting in the porch. 
St. John is reported to have fled out of a bath at Ephesus 
on hearing that the heretic Cerinthus was under the roof. 
Keble, I presume, remembered the story, and acted like the 
apostle. 

The inability to appreciate the force of arguments which 
he did not like saved him from Rome, but did not save him 
from Roman doctrine. It would, perhaps, have been better 
if he had left the Church of England, instead of remaining 
there to shelter behind his high authority a revolution in its 
teaching. The mass has crept back among us, with which 
we thought we had done forever, and the honorable name of 
Protestant, once our proudest distinction, has been made 
over to the Church of Scotland and tlie Dissenters. 

Far different from Keble, from my brother, from Dr. 



The Tractarians. Ill 

Pusey, from all the rest, was the true chief of the Catholic 
revival — John Henry Newman. Compared with him, they 
were all but as ciphers, and he the indicating number. The 
times I speak of are far distant ; the actors and the stormy 
passions which bubbled round them are long dead and for- 
gotten among new excitements. Newman, too, for many 
years had di'opped silent, and disappeared from the world's 
eyes. He came out again in a conflict with a dear friend of 
mine, who, on my account partly (at least, in reviewing a 
book which I had written), provoked a contest with him, 
and impar congressus Achilli seemed to have been foiled. 
Charles Kingsley is gone from us. English readers know 
now what he was, and from me or from any one he needs 
no further panegyric. In that one instance he conducted 
his case unskilfully. He was wrong in his estimate of the 
character of his antagonist, whose integrity was as unblem- 
ished as his own. But the last word has still to be spoken 
on the essential question which was at issue between them. 
The immediate result was the publication of the famous 
"Apologia," a defence jDcrsonally of Newman's own life 
and actions, and next of the Catholic cause. The writer of 
it is again a power in modern society, a prince of the Church ; 
surrounded, if he appears in public, with adoring crowds, fine 
ladies going on their knees before him in London salons. 
Himself of most modest nature, he never sought greatness, 
but greatness found him in spite of himself. To him, if to 
any one man, the world owes the intellectual recovery of Ro- 
manism. Fifty years ago it was in England a dying creed, 
lingering in retirement in the halls and chapels of a few half- 
forgotten families. A shy Oxford student has come out on 
its behalf into the field of controversy, armed with the 
keenest weapons of modern learning and philosophy ; and 
wins illustrious converts, and has kindled hopes that Eng- 
land herself, the England of Elizabeth and Cromwell, will 
kneel for absolution again before the father of Christendom. 
Mr. Buckle questioned whether any great work has ever 
12 



178 Tlic Oxford Counter- Reformation. 

been done in this world by an individual man. Newman, 
by the solitary force of his own mind, has produced this ex- 
traordinary change. What he has done we all see ; what 
will come of it our children will see. Of the ma«:nitude 
of the phenomenon itself no reasonable person can doubt. 
Two writers have affected powerfully the present genera- 
tion of Englishmen. Newman is one, Thomas Carlyle is 
the other. But Carlyle has been at issue with all the 
tendencies of his age. Like a John the Baptist, he has stood 
alone preaching repentance in a world which is to him 
a wilderness. Newman has been the voice of the intel- 
lectual reaction of Europe, which was alarmed by an era of 
revolutions, and is looking for safety in the forsaken beliefs 
of the ages which it had been tempted to despise. 

The " Apologia " is the most beautiful of autobiographies, 
but it tells us only how the writer appeared to himself. We 
who were his contemporaries can alone say how he appeared 
to us in the old days at Oxford. 



Johi Henry Newman, 1T9 



LETTER III. 

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

My dear . My present letter will be given to a 

sincrle figure. When I entered at Oxford, John Henry 
Newman'' was beginning to be famous. The responsible 
authorities were watching him with anxiety; clever men 
were looking with interest and curiosity on the apparition 
among them of one of those persons of indisputable genius 
who was likely to make a mark upon his time. His appear- 
ance was striking. He was above the middle height, slight 
and spare. His head was large, his face remarkably like 
that of Julius Csesar. The forehead, the shape of the ears 
and nose, were almost the same. The lines of the mouth 
were very peculiar, and I should say exactly the same. I 
have often thought of the resemblance, and believed that 
it extended to the temperament. In both there was an 
original force of character which refused to be moulded by 
circumstances, which was to make its own way, and become 
a power in the world; a clearness of intellectual perception, 
a disdain for conventionalities, a temper imperious and wil- 
ful, but along with it a most attaching gentleness, sweetness, 
singleness of heart and purpose. Both were formed by 
nature to comiuand others ; both had the faculty of attract- 
ing to themselves the passionate devotion of their friends 
and followers; and in both cases, too, perhaps the devotion 
was rather due to the personal ascendency of the leader 
than to the cause which he represented. It was Caesar, not 
the principle of the empire, which overthrew Pompey and 
the constitution. Credo in Newmannum was a common 



180 The Oxford Coimtcr-Bcformcdion. 

phrase at Oxford, and is still unconsciously the faith of nine- 
tenths of the English converts to Rome. 

When I first saw him he had written his book upon the 
Arians. An accidental application had set him upon it, at a 
time, I believe, when he had half resolved to give himself to 
science and mathematics, and had so determined him into a 
theological career. He had published a volume or two of 
parochial sermons. A few short poems of his had also ap- 
peared in the " British Magazine," under the signature of 
" Delta," which were reprinted in the " Lyra Apostolica." 
They were unlike any other religious poetry which was then 
extant. It was hard to say why they were so fascinating. 
They had none of the musical grace of the " Christian Year." 
They were not harmonious ; the metre halted, the rhymes 
were irregular, yet there was something in them which seized 
the attention, and would not let it go. Keble's verses flowed 
in soft cadence over the mind, delightful, as sweet sounds are 
delightful, but are forgotten as the vibrations die away. New- 
man's had pierced into the heart and mind, and there re- 
mained. The literary critics of the day were puzzled. They 
saw that he was not an ordinary man ; what sort of an ex- 
traordinary man he was they could not tell. " The eye of 
Melpomene has been cast upon him," said the omniscient (I 
think) " Athena3um";^ "but the glance was not fixed or 
steady." The eye of Melpomene had extremely little to do 
in the matter. Here were thoughts like no other man's 
thoughts, and emotions like no other man's emotions. Here 
was a man who really believed his creed, and let it follow 
him into all his observations upon outward things. He had 
been travelling in Greece; he had carried with him his 
recollections of Thucydides, and while his companions were 
sketching olive gardens and old castles and picturesque har- 
bors at Corfu, Newman was recalling the scenes which those 

1 Perhaps it was not the Athenceum. I quote from memory. I remem- 
ber the passage from the amusement which it gave me; but it was between 
forty and fift}' j'cars ago, and I have never seen it since. 



Jolin Henry Nciuman. 181 

harbors had witnessed thousands of years ago in the civil 
wars which the Greek historian has made immortal. There 
was nothing in this that was unusual. Any one with a well- 
stored memory is affected by historical scenery^ But New- 
man was oppressed with the sense that the men who had 
fallen in that desperate strife were still alive, as much as he 
and his friends were alive. 

Their spirits live in awful singleness, 
he says, 

Each in its self-formed sphere of light or gloom. 

We should all, perhaps, have acknowledged this in words. 
It is happy for us that we do not all realize what the words 
mean. The minds of most of us would break under the 
strain. 

Other conventional beliefs, too, were quickened into start- 
ling realities. We had been hearing much in those days 
about the benevolence of the Supreme Being, and our cor- 
responding obligation to charity and philanthropy. If the 
received creed was true, benevolence was by no means the 
only characteristic of that Being. What God loved we 
might love ; but there were things which God did not love ; 
accordingly, we found Newman saying to us, — 

Christian, would'st thou learn to love ? 
First learn thee how to hate. 

Hatred of sin and zeal and fear 

Lead up tlie Holy Hill ; 
Track them, till charity appear 

A self-denial still. 

It was not austerity that made him speak so. No one was 
more essentially tender-hearted. But he took the usually 
accepted Christian account of man and his destiny to be 
literally true, and the terrible character of it weighed upon 
him. 

Sunt lacrymae rerum et meutera mortalia tangunt. 



182 Tlu Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

He could be gentle enough in other moods. " Lead, kindly 
Light," is the most popular hymn in the language. All of 
us, Catholic, Protestant, or such as can see their way to no 
positive creed at all, can here meet on common ground and 
join in a common prayer. Familiar as the lines are, they 
may here be written down once more : — 

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom 

Lead Thoii me on. 
The night is dark, and I am far from home, 

Lead Thou me on. 
Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see 
Far distant scenes — one step enough for me. 

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou 

Should'st lead me on. 
I loved to choose and see my path ; but now 

Lead Thou me on. 
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, 
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years. 

So long Thy power hath blest us, sure it will 

Still lead us on, 
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 

The night is gone, 
And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. 

It has been said that men of letters are either much less 
or much greater than their writings. Cleverness and the 
skilful use of other people's thoughts produce works which 
take us in till we see the authors, and then we are disen- 
chanted. A man of genius, on the other hand, is a spring 
in which there is always more behind than flows from it. 
The painting or the poem is but a part of him inadequately 
realized, and his nature expresses itself, with equal or fuller 
completeness, in his life, his conversation, and personal pres- 
ence. This was eminently true of Newman. Greatly as 
his poetry had struck me, he was himself all that the poetry 
was, and something far beyond. I had then never seen so 



John Henry Newman. 183 

impressive a person. I met him now and then in private ; 
I attended his church and heard him preach Sunday after 
Sunday ; he is supposed to have been insidious, to have led 
his disciples on to conclusions to which he designed to bring 
them, while his j)ui'pose was carefully veiled. He was, on 
the contrary, the most transparent of men. He told us 
what he believed to be true. He did not know where it 
would carry him. No one who has ever risen to any great 
height in this world refuses to move till he knows -where he 
is going. He is impelled in each step which he takes by a 
force within himself. He satisfies himself only that the step 
is a right one, and he leaves the rest to Providence. New- 
man's mind was world-wide. He was interested in every- 
thing which was going on in science, in politics, in literature. 
Nothing was too large for him, nothing too trivial, if it threw 
light upon the central question, what man really was, and 
what was his destiny. He was careless about his personal 
prospects. He had no ambition to make a career, or to rise 
to rank and power. Still less had pleasure any seductions 
for him. His natural temperament was bright and light ; 
his senses, even the commonest, were exceptionally delicate. 
I was told that, though he rarely drank wine, he was trusted 
to choose the vintages for the college cellar. He could 
admire enthusiastically any greatness of action and charac- 
ter, however remote the sphere of it from his own. Gur- 
wood's " Dispatches of the Duke of Wellington " came out 
just then. Newman had been reading the book, and a friend 
asked him what he thought of it. " Think ? " he said, " it 
makes one burn to have been a soldier." But his own subject 
was the absorbing interest with him. Where Christianity 
is a real belief, where there are distinct convictions that a 
man's own self and the millions of human beings who are 
playing on the earth's surface are the objects of a supernat- 
ural dispensation, and are on the road to heaven or hell, 
the most powerful mind may well be startled at the aspect of 
things. If Christianity was true, since Christianity was true 



184 Tlie Oxford Counter-Ecformation. 

(for Newman at no time doubted the reality of the revela- 
tion), then modern England, modern Europe, with its march 
of intellect and its useful knowledge and its material prog- 
ress, was advancing with a light heart into ominous condi- 
tions. Keble had looked into no lines of thought but his 
own. Newman had read omnivorously ; he had studied 
modern thought and modern life in all its forms, and with 
all its many-colored passions. He knew, of course, that 
many men of learning and ability believed that Christianity 
was not a revelation at all, but had been thrown out, like 
other creeds, in the growth of the human mind. He knew 
that doubts of this kind were the inevitable results of free 
discussion and free toleration of differences of opinion ; and 
he was too candid to attribute such doubts, as others did, to 
wickedness of heart. He could not, being what he was, 
acquiesce in the established religion as he would acquiesce 
in the law of the land, because it was there, and because the 
country had accepted it, and because good geueral reasons 
could be given for assuming it to be right. The soundest 
arguments, even the arguments of Bishop Butler himself, 
went no farther than to establish a probability. But relig- 
ion with Newman was a jDersonal thing between himself and 
his Maker, and it was not possible to feel love and devotion 
to a Being whose existence was merely probable. As Car- 
lyle says of himself when in a similar condition, a religion 
which was not a certainty was a mockery and a horror ; and 
unshaken and unshakable as his own convictions were, 
Newman evidently was early at a loss for the intellectual 
grounds on which the claims of Christianity to abstract 
belief could be based. The Protestant was satisfied with 
the Bible, the original text of which, and perhaps the Eng- 
lish translation, he regarded as inspired. But the inspira- 
tion itself was an assumption, and had to be proved ; and 
Newman, though he believed the inspiration, seems to have 
recognized earlier than most of his contemporaries that the 
Bible was not a single book, but a national literature, pro- 



John Henry Newman. 185 

duced at intervals, during many hundred years, and under 
endless varieties of circumstances. Protestant and Catholic 
alike appealed to it, and they could not both be right. Yet 
if the differences between them were essential, there must 
be some authority capable of deciding between them. The 
Anglican Church had a special theology of its own, profess- 
ing to be based on the Bible. Yet to suppose that each 
individual left to himself would gather out of the Bible, if 
able and conscientious, exactly these opinions and no others, 
was absurd and contrary to experience. There were the 
creeds ; but on what authority did the creeds rest ? On the 
four councils ? or on other councils, and, if other, on which ? 
Was it on the Church ? and, if so, on what Church ? The 
Church of the fathers ? or the Church still present and 
alive and speaking ? If for living men, among whom new 
questions were perpetually rising, a Church which was also 
living could not be dispensed with, then what was that 
Church, and to what conclusions would such an admission 
lead us ? 

With us undergraduates Newman, of course, did not enter 
on such important questions, although they were in the air, 
and we talked about them among ourselves. He, when we 
met him, spoke to us about subjects of the day, of liter- 
ature, of public persons and incidents, of everything which 
was generally interesting. He seemed always to be better 
informed on common topics of conversation than any one 
else who was present. He was never condescending with 
us, never didactic or authoritative ; but what he said carried 
conviction alonjj with it. When we were wrong- he knew 
why we were wrong, and excused our mistakes to ourselves 
while he set us right. Perhaps his supreme merit as a 
talker was that he never tried to be witty or to say striking 
things. Ironical he could be, but not ill-natured. Not a 
malicious anecdote was ever heard from him. Prosy he 
could not be. He was lightness itself — the lightness of 
elastic strength — and he was interesting because he never 



186 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

talked for talking's sake, but because he had something real 
to say. 

Thus it was that we, who had never seen such another 
man, and to whom he appeared, perhaps, at special advan- 
tage in contrast with the normal college don, came to regard 
Newman with the affection of pupils (though pupils, strictly- 
speaking, he had none) for an idolized master. The sim- 
plest word which dropped from him was treasured as if it 
had been an intellectual diamond. For hundreds of young 
men Credo in Newmannuni was the genuine symbol of 
faith. 

Personal admiration, of course, inclined us to look to him 
as a guide in matters of religion. No one who heard his 
sermons in those days can ever forget them. They were 
seldom directly theological. We had theology enough and 
to spare from the select preachers before the university. 
Newman, taking some Scripture character for a text, spoke 
to us about ourselves, our temptations, our experiences. 
His illustrations were inexhaustible. He seemed to be 
addressing the most secret consciousness of each of us — as 
the eyes t)f a portrait appear to look at every person in a 
room. He never exaggerated ; he was never unreal. A 
sermon from him was a poem, formed on a distinct idea, 
fascinating by its subtlety, welcome — how welcome ! — 
from its sincerity, interesting from its originality, even to 
those who were careless of religion ; and to others who 
wished to be religious, but had found religion dry and 
wearisome, it was like the springing of a fountain out of 
the rock. 

The hearts of men vibrate in answer to one another like 
the strings of musical instruments. These sermons were, I 
suppose, the records of Newman's own mental experience. 
They appear to me to be the outcome of continued medita- 
tion upon his fellow-creatures and their position in this 
world ; their awful responsibilities ; the mystery of their 
nature, strangely mixed of good and evil, of strength and 



John Henry Newman. 187 

weakness. A tone, not of fear, but of infinite pity, runs 
through them all, and along with it a resolution to look 
facts in the face ; not to fly to evasive generalities about 
infinite mercy and benevolence, but to examine what revela- 
tion really has added to our knowledge, either of what we 
are or of what lies before us. We were met on all sides 
with difficulties ; for experience did not confirm, it rather 
contradicted, what revelation appeared distinctly to assert. 
I recollect a sermon from him — I think in the year 1839 — 
I have never read it since ; I may not now remember the 
exact words, but the impression left is ineffaceable. It was 
on the trials of faith, of which he gave different illustra- 
tions. He supposed, first, two children to be educated to- 
gether, of similar temperament and under similar conditions, 
one of whom was baptized and the other unbaptized. He 
represented them as growing up equally amiable, equally 
upright, equally reverent and God-fearing, with no outward 
evidence that one was in a different spiritual condition from 
the other ; yet we were required to believe, not only that 
their condition was totally different, but that one was a 
child of God, and his companion was not. 

Again, he drew a sketch of the average men and women 
who made up society, whom we ourselves encountered in 
daily life, or were connected with, or read about in news- 
papers. They were neither special saints nor special sin- 
ners. Religious men had faults, and often serious ones. 
Men careless of religion were often amiable in private life, 
— good husbands, good fathers, steady friends, in public 
honorable, brave, and patriotic. Even in the worst and 
wickedest, in a witch of Endor, there was a human heart 
and human tenderness. None seemed ofood enough for 
heaven, none ^o bad as to deserve to be consigned to the 
company of evil spirits, and to remain in pain and misery 
forever. Yet all these people were, in fact, divided one 
from the other by an invisible line of separation. If they 
were to die on the spot as they actually were, some woukl 



188 The Oxford Comitcr-Rcforination. 

be saved, the rest would be lost, — the saved to have eter- 
nity of happiness, the lost to be with tlie devils in hell. 

Again, I am not sure whether it was on the same occasion, 
but it was in following the same line of thouglit, Newman 
described closely some of the incidents of our Lord's pas- 
sion ; he then paused. For a few moments there was a 
breathless silence. Then, in a low, clear voice, of which the 
faintest vibration was audible in the farthest corner of St. 
INIai-y's, he said, " Now, 1 bid you recollect that He to whom 
these things were done was Almighty God." It was as if an 
electric stroke had gone through the church, as if every person 
present understood for the lirst time the meaning of what he 
had all his life been saying. 1 suppose it was an epoch in 
the mental history of more than one of my Oxford contem- 
poraries. 

Another sermon left its mark upon me. It was upon evi- 
dence. I had supposed up to that time that the chief events 
related in the Gospels were as well authenticated as any 
other facts of history. I had read Paley and Grotins at 
school, and their arguments had been completely satisfactory 
to me. The Gospels had been written by apostles or com- 
panions of apostles. There was suiRcient evidence, in 
Paley's words, " that many professing to be original wit- 
nesses of the Christian miracles had passed their lives in 
labors, dauirers, and sufferinjjs in attestation of the accounts 
which they delivered." St. Paul was a further and indepen- 
d(Mit authority. It was not conceivable that such men as St. 
Paul and the other apostles evidently were should have con- 
spired to impose a falsehood upon the world, and should 
have succeeded in doing it undetected in an age exception- 
ally cultivated and sceptical. Gibbon I had studied also, 
and had thought about the five causes by which he explained 
how Christianity came to be believed ; but they had seemed 
to me totally inadequate. I was something more than sur- 
prised, therefore, when I lieard Newman say that Hume's 
argument against the credibility of miracles was logically 



John Henry Neivman. 189 

sound. The laws of nature, so far as could be observed, 
were uniform, and in any given instance it was more likely, 
as a mere matter of evidence, that men should deceive or be 
deceived, than that those laws should have been deviated 
from. Of course he did not leave the matter in this posi- 
tion. Hume goes on to say that he is speaking of evidence 
as addressed to the reason ; the Christian religion addresses 
itself to faith, and the credibility of it is therefore unaffected 
by his objection. What Hume said in irony Newman 
accepted in eainest. Historically, the proofs were insulli- 
cient, or sufficient only to create a sense of probability. 
Christianity was apprehended by a faculty essentially differ- 
ent. It was called faith. But what was faith, and on what 
did it rest ? Was it as if mankind had been born with but 
four senses, by which to form their notions of things exter- 
nal to them, and that a fifth sense of sight was suddenly con- 
ferred on favored individuals, which converted conjecture 
into certainty ? I could not tell. For myself, this way of 
putting the matter gave me no new sense at all, and only 
taught me to distrust my old ones. 

I say at once that I think it was injudicious of Newman 
to throw out before us thus abruptly an opinion so ex- 
tremely agitating. I explain it by supposing that here, as 
elsewhere, his sermons contained simply the workings of 
his own mind, and were a sort of public confession which he 
made as he went along. I suppose that something of this 
kind had been passing through him. He was in advance of 
his time. He had studied the early fathers ; he had studied 
Church history, and the lives of the saints and martyrs. He 
knew that the hard and fast line which Protestants had 
drawn at which miracles had ceased was one which no his- 
torical canon could reasonably defend. Stories of the exer- 
cise of supernatural power ran steadily from the beginning 
to the latest period of the Church's existence; many of them 
were as well supported by evidence as the miracles of the 
New Testament; and if reason was to be the judge, no 



190 The Oxford Co writer -Eef or mation. 

arbitrary separation of the age of the Apostles from the 
age of their successors was possible. Some of these stories 
might be inventions, or had no adequate authority for them ; 
but for others there was authority of eye-witnesses ; and 
if these were to be set aside by a peremptory act of will as 
unworthy of credit, the Gospel miracles themselves might 
fall before the same methods. The argument of Hume was 
already silently applied to the entire post-apostolic period. 
It had been checked by the traditionary reverence for the 
Bible. But this was not reason ; it was faith. Perhaps, 
too, he saw that the alternative did not lie as sharply as 
Paley supposed, between authentic fact and deliberate fraud. 
Legends might grow ; they grew every day, about common 
things and persons, without intention to deceive. Imagi- 
nation, emotion, affection, or, on the other side, fear and 
animosity, are busy with the histories of men who have 
played a remarkable part in the world. Great historic 
figures — a William Tell, for instance — have probably had 
no historical existence at all, and yet are fastened indelibly 
into national traditions. Such reflections as these would 
make it evident that if the Christian miracles were to be 
believed, not as possibly or probably true, but as indis- 
putably true — true in such a sense that a man's life on 
earth, and his hope for the future, could be securely based 
upon them — the history must be guaranteed by authority 
different in kind from the mere testimony to be gathered 
out of books. I suppose every thinking person would now 
acknowledge this to be true. And we see, in fact, that 
Christians of various persuasions supplement the evidence in 
several ways. Some assume the verbal inspiration of the 
Bible ; others are conscious of personal experiences which 
make doubt impossible. Others, again, appeal justly to the 
existence of Christianity as a fact, and to the power which it 
has exerted in elevating and humanizing mankind. New- 
man found what he wanted in the living authority of the 
Church, in the existence of an organized body which had 



JoImi Henry Newman. 191 

been instituted by our Lord Himself, and was still actively- 
present among us as a living witness of the truth. Thus 
the imperfection of the outward evidence was itself an argu- 
ment for the Catholic theory. All religious people were 
agreed that the facts of the Gospel narrative really hap- 
pened as they were said to have happened. Proof there 
must be somewhere to justify the conviction ; and proof 
could only be found in the admission that the Church, the 
organized Church with its bishops and priests, was not a 
human institution, but was the living body through which 
the Founder of Christianity Himself was speaking to us. 

Such, evidently, was one use to which Hume's objection 
could be applied, and to those who, like Newman, were pro- 
vided with the antidote, there was no danger in admitting 
the force of it. Nor would the risk have been great with 
his hearers if they had been playing with the question as 
a dialectical exercise. But he had made them feel and 
think seriously about it by his own intense earnestness ; and, 
brought up as most of them had been to believe that Chris- 
tianity had sufficient historical evidence for it, to be sud- 
denly told that the famous argument against miracles was 
logically valid after all, was at least startling. The Church 
theory, as making good a testimony otherwise defective, 
was new to most of us, and not very readily taken in. To 
remove the foundation of a belief, and to substitute another, 
is like putting new foundations to a house, — the house 
itself may easily be overthrown in the process. I have 
said before that in a healthy state of things religion is con- 
sidered too sacied to be argued about. It is believed as a 
matter of duty, and the why or the wherefore is not so 
much as thought about. Revolutions are not far off when 
men begin to ask whence the sovereign derives his authorify. 
Scepticism is not far off when they ask why they believe 
their creed. Wo had all been satisfied about the Gospel 
history ; not a shadow of doubt had crossed the minds of 
one of us ; and though we might not have been able to give 



192 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

a logical reason for our certitude, the certitude was in us, 
and might well have been let alone. I afterwards read 
Hume attentively ; and though old associations prevented 
me from recognizing the full force of what he had to say, 
no doubt I was unconsciously affected by him. I remember 
insisting to a friend that the essential part of religion was 
morality. My friend replied that morality was only possi- 
ble to persons who received power through faith to keep the 
commandments. But this did not satisfy me, for it seemed 
contrary to fact. There were persons of great excellence 
whose spiritual beliefs were utterly different. I could not 
bring myself to admit that the goodness, for instance, of a 
Unitarian was only apparent. After all is said, the visible 
conduct of men is the best test that we can have of their 
inward condition. If not the best, where are we to find a 
better ? 



Tract XC. and its Consequences. 193 



LETTER IV. 

TRACT XC. AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 

My dear . After I had taken my degree, and 

before I re-entered upon residence as fellow, my confi- 
dence in my Oxford teachers underwent a further trial. I 
spent some months in Ireland in the family of an Evangeli- 
cal clergyman. I need not mention names which have no 
historical notability. My new friends were favorable speci- 
mens of a type which was then common in Ireland. The 
Church of England was becoming semi-Catholic. The 
Church of Ireland left Catholicism to those to whom it 
properly belonged. It represented the principles of the 
Reformation. It was a branch of what Mr. Gladstone has 

called the Upas-tree of Protestant ascendency. Mr. 

and the circle into which I was thrown were, to begin with, 
high-bred and cultivated gentlemen. They had seen the 
world. Some of them had been connected with the public 
movements of the time. O'Connell was then in his glory. 
I heard Irish affairs talked of by those who lived in the 
midst of them. A sharp line of division among the people 
distinguished the Protestants from the Catholics. The 
Protestants were industrious and thriving. Mendicancy, 
squalor, and misery went along with the flocks of the priest, 
whether as cause or effect of their belief, or in accidental 
connection with it, I could not tell. The country was out- 
wardly quiet, but there were ominous undertones of disaffec- 
tion. There were murders now and then in the mountains, 
and I was startled at the calmness with which they were 
spoken of. We were in the midst of the traditions of 1798. 
13 



194 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

My friend's father had been attacked in his palace, and the 
folios in the library bore marks of having been used to 
barricade the windows. He himself spoke as if he was 
living on a volcano ; but he was as unconcerned as a soldier 
at his post, and so far as outward affairs went he was as 
kind to Catholics as to Protestants. His outdoor servants 
were Catholics, and they seemed attached to him ; but he 
knew that they belonged to secret societies, and that if they 
were ordered to kill him they would do it. The presence 
of exceptional danger elevates characters which it does not 
demoralize. There was a quiet good sense, an intellectual 
breadth of feeling in this household, which to me, who had 
been bred up to despise Evangelicals as unreal and affected, 
was a startling surprise. I had looked down on Dissenters 
especially, as being vulgar among their other enormities ; 
here were persons whose creed differed little from that of 
the Calvinistic Methodists, yet they were easy, natural, and 
dignified. In Ireland they were part of a missionary garri- 
son, and in their daily lives they carried the colors of their 
faith. In Oxford, reserve was considered a becoming fea- 
ture in the religious character. The doctrines of Chris- 
tianity were mysteries, and mysteries were not to be lightly 

spoken of. Christianity at was part of the atmosphere 

which we breathed ; it was the great fact of our existence, 
to which everything else was subordinated. Mystery it 
might be, but not more of a mystery than our own bodily 
lives and the system of which we were a part. The prob- 
lem was to arrange all our thoughts and acquirements in 
harmony with the Christian revelation, and to act it out 
consistently in all that we said and did. The family devo- 
tions were long, but there was no formalism, and everybody 
took a part in them. A chapter was read and talked over, 
and practical lessons were drawn out of it ; otherwise there 
were no long faces or solemn affectations ; the conversations 
were never foolish or trivial ; serious subjects were lighted 
up as if by an ever-present spiritual sunshine. 



Tract XC. and its Consequences. 195 

Such was the new element into which I was introduced 
under the shadow of the Irish Upas-tree ; the same uniform 
tone being visible in parents, in children, in the indoor ser- 
vants, and in the surrounding society. And this was Prot- 
estantism. This was the fruit of the Reformation which 
we had been learning at Oxford to hate as rebellion and to 
despise as a system without foundation. The foundation of 
it was faith in the authority of Holy Scripture, which was 
supposed to be verbally inspired ; and as a living witness, 
the presence of Christ in the heart. Here, too, the letter 
of the word was allowed to require a living authentication. 
The Anglo-Catholics at Oxford maintained that Christ was 
present in the Church ; the Evangelicals said that he was 
present in the individual believing soul, and why might they 
not be right ? So far as Scripture went they had promises 
to allege for themselves more definite than the Catholics. 
If the test was personal holiness, I for my own part had 
never yet fallen in with any human beings in whose ac- 
tions and conversation the spirit of Christ was more visibly 
present. 

My feelings of reverence for the Reformers revived. 
Fact itself was speaking for them. Beautiful pictures had 
been put before us of the mediaeval Church which a sacrile- 
gious hand had ruthlessly violated. Here on one side we 
saw the mediaeval creed in full vitality with its fruits upon 
it which our senses could test; on ,the other, equally active, 
the fruits of the teaching of Luther and Calvin. I felt that 
I had been taken in, and I resented it. Modern history 
resumed its traditionary English aspect. I went again over 
the ground of the sixteenth century. Unless the intelligent 
part of Europe had combined to misrepresent the entire 
period, the corruption of Roman Catholicism had become 
intolerable. Put the matter as the Roman Catholics would, 
it was a fact impossible to deny, that they had alienated half 
Europe, that the Teutonic nations had risen against them 
in indignation, and had substituted for the Christianity of 



196 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

Rome the Christianity of the Bible. They had tried, and 
tried in vain, to extinguish the revolt in blood, and the na- 
tional life of modern England had grown up out of their 
overthrow. With the Anglo-Catholics the phenomena were 
the same in a lighter form. The Anglo-Catholics, too, had 
persecuted so far as they dared ; they, too, had been narrow, 
cruel, and exclusive. Peace and progress had only been 
made possible when their teeth were drawn and their nails 
pared, and they were tied fast under the control of Parlia- 
ment. History, like present reality, was all in favor of the 
views of my Evangelical friends. 

And if history was in their favor, so were analogy and 
general probability. Mediaeval theology had been formed 
at a time when the relations of matter and spirit had been 
guessed at by imagination, rather than studied with care 
and observation. Mind it was now known could only act 
on matter through the body specially attached to it. Ideas 
reached the mind through the senses, but it was by method 
and sequence which, so far as experience went, was never 
departed from. The Middle Ages, on the other hand, be- 
lieved in witchcraft and magic. Incantation could call up 
evil angels and control the elements. The Catholic theory 
of the Sacraments was the counterpart of enchantment. 
Outward mechanical acts which, except as symbols, had 
no meaning, were supposed to produce spiritual changes, 
and spoken words to produce, like spells, changes in mate- 
rial substance. The imposition of a bishop's hands con- 
ferred supernatural powers. An ordained priest altered 
the nature of the elements in the Eucharist by consecrating 
them. "Water and a prescribed formula regenerated an in- 
fant in baptism. The whole Church, it was true, had held 
these opinions down to the sixteenth century. But so it 
had believed that medicine was only efficacious if it was 
blessed ; so it had believed that saints' relics worked mira- 
cles. Larger knowledge had taught us that magic was an 
illusion, that spells and charms were fraud or folly. The 



Tract XC. and its Conseque7ices. 197 

Reformers in the same way had thrown off the notion that 
there was anything mysterious or supernatural in the clergy 
or the Sacraments. The clergy in their opinion were like 
other men, and were simply set apart for the office of teach- 
ing the truths of religion. The Sacraments were symbols, 
which affected the moral nature of those who could under- 
stand them, as words or pictures, or music, or anything else 
which had an intelligible spiritual meaning. They brought 
before the mind in a lively manner the facts and principles 
of Christianity. To regard them as more was superstition 
and materialism. Evangelicalism had been represented to 
me as weak and illiterate. I had found it in harmony with 
reason and experience, and recommended as it was by per- 
sonal holiness in its professors, and general beauty of mind 
and character, I concluded that Protestantism had more to 
say for itself than my Oxford teachers had allowed. 

For the first time, too, among these good people I was in- 
troduced to Evangelical literature. Newton and Faber had 
given me good reasons when I was a boy for believing the 
Pope to be the man of sin ; but T had read nothing of Evangel- 
ical positive theology, and books like the " Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress " were nothing less than a revelation to me. I do not 
mean that I could adopt the doctrine in the precise shape in 
which it was presented to me, that I was converted, or any- 
thing of that kind ; but I perceived that persons who rejected 
altogether tlie theory of Christianity which I had been 
taught to regard as the only tenable one, were as full of the 
spirit of Christ, and had gone through as many, as various, 
and as subtle Christian experiences as the most developed 
saint in the Catholic calendar. I saw it in their sermons, 
in their hymns, in their conversation. A clergyman, who 
was afterwards a bishop in the Irish Church, declared in 
my hearing that the theory of a Christian priesthood was a 
fiction ; that the notion of the Sacraments as having a me- 
chanical efficacy irrespective of their conscious effect upon 
the mind of the receiver was an idolatrous superstition ; 



198 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

that the Church was a human institution, which had varied 
in form in different ages, and might vary again ; that it was 
always falUble ; that it might have bishops in England, and 
dispense with bishops in Scotland and Germany; that a 
bishop was merely an officer ; that the apostolical succession 
was probably false as a fact — and, if a fact, implied noth- 
intr but historical continuity. Yet the man who said these 
thino-s had devoted his whole life to his Master's service — 
thought of nothing else, and cared for nothing else. 

The opinions were of no importance in themselves ; I was, 
of course, aware that many people held them ; but I real- 
ized now for the first time that clergymen of weight and 
learning in the Church of England, ordained and included in 
its formularies, could think in this way and openly say so, 
and that the Church to which Newman and Keble had 
taught us to look as our guide did not condemn them. 
Clearly, therefore, if the Church equally admitted persons 
who held the sacramental theory, she regarded the ques- 
tions between them as things indifferent. She, the sover- 
eign authority, if the Oxford view of the Church's functions 
was correct, declared that on such points we might follow 
our own judgment. This conclusion was forced home upon 
me, and shook the confidence which I had hitherto continued 
to feel in Newman. It was much in itself, and it relieved 
me of other perplexities. The piety, the charity, the moral 
excellence in the circle into which I had been thrown were 
evidences as clear as any evidence could be of a living faith. 
If the Catholic revivalists were right, these graces were but 
natural virtues, not derived through any recognized channel, 
uncovenanted mercies, perhaps counterfeits, not virtues at 
all, but cunning inventions of the adversary. And it had 
been impossible for me to believe this. A false diamond 
may gain credit with eyes that have never looked upon the 
genuine gem, but the pure water once seen cannot be mis- 
taken. More beautiful human characters than those of my 
Irish Evangelical friends I have never seen, and I have never 



Tract XC. and its Consequences. 199 

seen since. Whatever might be the " Notes of the Church," 
a holy life was the first and last of them ; and a holy life, it 
was demonstratedly plain to me, was no monopoly of the 
sacramental system. 

At the end of a year I returned to Oxford. There had 
been a hurricane in the interval, and the storm was still 
raging. Not the University only, but all England, lay and 
clerical, was agitating itself over Tract XC. The Anglican 
Church had been long ago described as having a Catholic 
Prayer-book, an Arminian clergy, and Calvinistic Articles. 
When either of the three schools asserted itself with empha- 
sis the others took alarm. Since the revolution of 1688 
Church and clergy had been contented to acquiesce in the 
common title of Protestant ; by consent of high and low 
the very name of Catholic had been abandoned to the Ro- 
manists ; and now when a Catholic party had risen again, 
declaring that they and they only were true Church of Eng- 
land men, the Articles, not unnaturally, had been thrown in 
their teeth. All the clergy had subscribed the Articles. The 
Articles certainly on the face of them condemned the doc- 
trines which the revivalists had been putting forward. 
Weak brothers among them were beginning to think that 
the Articles had committed the Church to heresy, and that 
they ought to secede. There were even a few who con- 
sidered that their position was not so much as honest. I 
recollect the Professor of Astronomy saying to me about 
this time that the obligation of a Tractarian to go to Rome 
was in the ratio of his intellectual obtuseness. If he was 
clever enough to believe two contradictory propositions at 
the same time, he might stay in the Church of England ; if 
his capacity of reconciliation was limited, he ought to leave 
it. It was to soothe the consciences of these troubled spirits 
that Tract XC. was written. As their minds had opened 
they had recognized in the mass, in purgatory, in the au- 
thority of tradition, in infallibility of councils, doctrines 
which down to the schism had been the ancient faith of 



200 The Oxford Counter -Reformation. 

Christendom. The Articles seemed distinctly to repudiate 
them ; and if these doctrines were true the body which 
rejected them could be no authentic branch of the Church 
Catholic. Newman undertook to remove this difficulty. He 
set himself to " minimize " what the Articles said, just as in 
later years he has " minimized " the decree of Papal infallibil- 
ity. He tells us that he cannot understand a religion which 
is not dogmatic ; but he too finds tight-lacing uncomfortable ; 
and though he cannot do without his dogma, it must mean as 
little as possible for him. He argues, in the first place, that 
the Articles could not have been intended to contradict the 
canons of the Council of Trent, as was popularly supposed, 
because they had been composed several years before those 
canons were published or the Council itself completed. Sec- 
ondly, that they were directed not against Catholic doctrines, 
but against the popular abuses of those doctrines. They con- 
demned " masses ; " they did not condemn the mass. They 
condemned the Romish doctrine of purgatory ; but the Rom- 
ish was not the Greek, and there might be many others. 
Finally, the Articles were legal documents, and were to 
be interpreted according to the strict meaning of the words. 
We do not interpret an Act of Parliament by what we know 
from other sources of the opinions of its framers ; we keep 
to the four corners of the Act itself. Newman said that we 
had as little occasion to trouble ourselves with the views of 
individual bishops in the sixteenth century. 

The English mind does not like evasion ; and on its first 
appearance the Tract was universally condemned as dis- 
honest. Very good people, my Irish friends among them, 
detested it, not for the views which it advocated, but as 
trifling with truth. I could not go along with them, partly 
because it had become plain to me that, little as they knew 
it, they themselves had at least equally to strain the lan- 
guage of the Baptismal Service, and of one of the three 
absolutions ; partly because I considered Newman's argu- 
ments to be legally sound. Formula^ agreed on in councils 



Tract XC. and its Consequences. 201 

and committees are not the produce of any one mind or of 
any one party. They are compromises in which opposing 
schools of thought are brought at last to agree after many 
discussions and alterations. Expressions intended to be 
plain and emphatic are qualihed to satisfy objectors. The 
emphasis of phrases may remain, but the point emphasized 
has been blunted. The closer all such documents are scru- 
tinized the more clear becomes the nature of their orioin. 
Certainly, if the Catholic theory is correct, and if tlie Holy 
Spirit really instructs mankind through the medium of coun- 
cils, and therefore through decrees which have been shaped 
in a manner so human, one can but wonder at the method 
that has been chosen. It seems like a deliberate contriv- 
ance to say nothing in seeming to say much ; for there are 
few forms of words which cannot be perforated by an acute 
legal intellect. But as far as Tract XC. was concerned, 
public opinion, after taking time to reflect, has pronounced 
Newman acquitted. It is historically certain that Elizabeth 
and her ministers intentionally framed the Church formulas 
so as to enable every one to use them who would disclaim 
allegiance to the Pope. The English Catholics, who were 
then more than half the nation, applied to the Council of 
Trent for leave to attend the English Church services, on 
the express ground that no Catholic doctrine was denied in 
them. The Council of Trent refused permission, and the 
petitioners, after hesitating till in the defeat of the Armada 
Providence had declared for the Queen, conformed (the 
greater number of them) on their own terms. They had 
fought for the Crown in the civil wars ; they had been de- 
feated, and since the Revolution had no longer existed as a 
theological party. But Newman was only claiming a posi- 
tion for himself and his friends which had been purposely left 
open when the constitution of the Anglican Church was 
formed. 

But religious men do not argue like lawyers. The 
Church of England might have been made intentionally 



202 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

comprehensive three centuries ago, but ever since 1688 it 
had banished Popery and Popish doctrines. When the 
Catholics were numerous and dangerous, it might have been 
prudent to conciUate them ; but the battle had been fought 
out since, and a century and a half of struggles and con- 
spiracies and revolutions and dethroned dynasties were not 
to go for nothing. Compromise might have dictated the 
letter of the Articles, but unbroken usage for a hundred 
and fifty years had created a Protestant interpretation of 
them which had become itself authoritative. Our fathers 
had risked their lives to get rid of Romanism. It was not 
to be allowed to steal into the midst of us again under false 
colors. So angry men said at the time, and so they acted. 

Newman, however, had done his work. He had broken 
the back of the Articles. He had given the Church of our 
fathers a shock from which it was not to recover in its old 
form. He had written his Tract, that he might see whether 
the Church of England would tolerate Catholic doctrine. 
Had he waited a few years, till the seed which he had sown 
could grow, he would have seen the Church unprotestantiz- 
ing itself more ardently than his most sanguine hope could 
have anticipated, the squire parsons of the Establishment 
gone like a dream, an order of priests in their places, with 
an undress uniform in the world, and at their altars " cele- 
brating" masses in symbolic robes, with a directory to guide 
their inexperience. He would have seen them hearing con- 
fession, giving absolution, adoring Our Lady and professing 
to receive visits from her, preaching transubstantiation and 
purgatory and penance and everything which his Tract had 
claimed for them ; founding monasteries and religious orders, 
washing out of their naves and chancels the last traces of 
Puritan sacrilege ; doing all this in defiance of courts of law 
and Parliaments and bishops, and forcing the authorities to 
admit that they cannot be interfered with. It has been a 
great achievement for a single man ; not the less so that, 
although he admitted that he had no right to leave the 



Tract XC. and its Consequences. 203 

Churcli in which he was born unless she repudiated what he 
considered to be true, he himself would not even pause to 
discern whether she would repudiate it or not. 

But Newman, though he forbids private judgment to 
others, seems throughout to retain the right of it for his own 
guidance. He regarded the immediate treatment of the 
message which he had delivered as the measure of his own 
duty. His convictions had grown slowly on himself; they 
were new to the clergy, unpalatable to the laity, violently at 
variance with the national feelings and traditions. Yet the 
bishops were expected to submit on the spot, without objec- 
tion or hesitation, to the dictation of a single person ; and 
because they spoke with natural alarm and anxiety, his mis- 
givings about the Catholicity of the Church of England 
turned instantly into certainties, and in four years carried 
him away over the border to Popery. 

It is evident now, on reading Newman's own history of 
his religious opinions, that the world, which said from the 
beginning that he was going to Rome, understood him bet- 
ter than he then understood himself, or, perhaps, than he 
understands himself now. A man of so much ability would 
never have rushed to conclusions so precipitately merely on 
account of a few bishops' charges. Excuses these charges 
might be, or explanations to account for what he was doing ; 
but the motive force which was driving hira forward was the 
overmasterinoj "idea" to which he had surrendered himself. 
He could have seen, if he had pleased, the green blade of 
the Catholic harvest springing in a thousand fields ; at pres- 
ent there is scarcely a clergyman in the country who does 
not carry upon him in one form or other the marks of the 
Tractarian movement. The answer which he required has 
been given. The Church of England has not only admitted 
Catholic doctrine, but has rushed into it with extraordinary 
enthusiasm. He miglit be expected to have recognized that 
his impatient departure has been condemned by his own 
arguments. Yet the " Apologia " shows no repentance nor 



204 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

explains the absence of it. He tells us that he has found 
peace in the Church of Rome, and wonders that he could 
ever have hoped to find it in the English Communion. 
Very likely. Others knew how it would be from the first. 
He did not know it ; but if the bench of bishops had been 
as mild and enduring as their present successors, it would 
have made no difference. 

Newman was living at Littlemore, a village three miles 
from Oxford, when I came back from Ireland. He had 
given up his benefice, though still occasionally preaching 
in St. Mary's pulpit before the University. He was other- 
wise silent and passive, though his retirement was suspected, 
and he was an object of much impertinent curiosity. For 
myself he was as fascinating as ever. I still looked on him 
— I do at this moment — as one of the two most remarka- 
ble men whom I have ever met with ; but I had learnt from 
my evangelical experiences that equally good men could 
take different views in theology, and Newmanism had ceased 
to have exclusive interest to me. I was beginning to think 
that it would be well if some of my High Church friends 
could remember also that opinions were not everything. 
Many of them were tutors, and tutors responsible for the 
administration of the University. The discipline was lax, 
the undergraduates were idle and extravagant ; there were 
scandalous abuses in college management, and life at the 
University was twice as expensive as it need have been. 
Here were plain duties lying neglected and unthought of, 
or, if remembered at all, remembered only by the Liberals, 
whom Newman so much detested. Intellectually, the con- 
"troversies to which I had listened had unsettled me. Diffi- 
culties had been suggested which I need not have heard of, 
but out of which some road or other had now to be looked 
for. I was thrown on my own resources, and began to read 
hard in modern history and literature. Carlyle's books came 
across me ; by Carlyle I was led to Goethe. I discovered 
Lessing for myself, and then Neander and Schleiermacher. 



Tract XC. and its Consequences. 205 

The " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," which 
came out about that time, introduced modern science to us 
under an unexj^ected aspect, and opened new avenues of 
thought. As I had perceived before that the Evangelicals 
could be as saint-like as Catholics, so now I found that men 
of the highest gifts and uuimpeached purity of life could 
differ from both by whole diameters in the interpretation 
of the same phenomena. Further, this became clear to 
me, that the Catholic revival in Oxford, spontaneous as it 
seemed, was part of a general movement which was going 
on all over Europe. In France, in Holland, in Germany, 
intellect and learning had come to conclusions from which 
relimon and conscience were recoilino^. Pious Protestants 
had trusted themselves upon the Bible as their sole founda- 
tion. They found their philosophers and professors assum- 
ing that the Bible was a human composition — parts of it 
of doubtful authenticity, other parts bearing marks on them 
of the mistaken opinions of the age when these books were 
written ; and they were flying terrified back into the Church 
from which they had escaped at the Reformation, like os- 
triches liiding their heads in a bush. 

Yet how could the Church, as they called it, save them ? 
If what the philosophers were saying was untrue, it could 
be met by argument. If the danger was real, they were 
like men caught in a thunderstorm, flying for a refuge to a 
tree, which only the more certainly would attract the light- 
ning. Catholics are responsible for everything for which 
Protestants are responsible, plus a great deal besides which 
Protestants rejected once as lies, and the stroke will fall 
where the evidence is weakest. Christianity, Catholic and 
Protestant alike, rests on the credibility of the Gospel 
history. Verbal inaccuracies, if such there be, no more 
disprove the principal facts related in the Gospels than 
mistakes in Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion prove 
tiuit there was never a Commonwealth in Ensland. After 
all is said, these facts must be tested by testimony, like all 



206 The Oxford Counter-Befo')nnation. 

other facts. The personal experiences of individuals may 
satisfy themselves, but are no evidence to others. Far less 
can the Church add to the proof, for the Church rests on the 
history, not the history on the Church. That the Church 
exists, and has existed, proves no more than that it is an 
institution which has had a beginning in time, and may have 
an end in time. The individuals of whom it is composed 
have believed in Christianity, and their witness is valuable 
according to their opportunities, like that of other men, but 
this is all. That the Church as a body is immortal, and has 
infallible authority antecedent to proof, is a mere assump- 
tion, like the tortoise in the Indian myth. If the facts 
cannot be established, the Catholic theory falls with the 
Protestant ; if they can, they are the common property of 
mankind, and to pile upon them the mountains of incredi- 
bilities for which the Catholic Church has made itself an- 
swerable, is only to play into the hands of unbelievers, and 
reduce both alike to legend. 

Still, the reaction was a fact, visible everywhere, espe- 
cially in Protestant countries. The bloody stains on the 
Catholic escutcheon were being painted over. The savage 
massacres, the stake at Smithfield, and the Spanish auto-da- 
fe, the assassinations and civil wars and conspiracies at which 
we had shuddered as children, were being condoned or ex- 
plained away. Hitherto it had been strenuously denied that 
the Oxford movement was in the direction of Rome ; it was 
insisted rather that, more than anything else, Tractarianism 
would tend to keep men away from Rome. No Protestant 
had spoken harder things of the Roman see and its doings 
than Newman had, and I was still for myself unable to be- 
lieve that he was on his way to it. But the strongest swim- 
mers who are in the current of a stream must go where it 
carries them, and his retirement from active service in the 
Church of England showed that he himself was no longer 
confident. 



The Lives of the Saints. 207 



LETTER V. 

THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS. 

My dear . I said in my last letter that at the time 

at which Newmau withdrew from Oxford to Littlemore 
there was nothing to lead us generally to suppose that he 
meditated secession. Tract XC, in spite of the outcry, 
had not been condemned by any legally constituted courts 
No existing law had been broken by it, and there was no 
likelihood of fresh Parliamentary legislation. He had in 
fact won the battle. He had established his principle. If 
he chose to hold and teach his Catholic doctrines as a mem- 
ber of the Church of England, it was clear that he would not 
be driven out of it. If he had meant to leave the Church of 
England, Tract XC. would have been gratuitous and an 
impertinence. 

Thus, when it was announced that he was to bring out a 
series of biographies of distinguished English saints, the pro- 
posal seemed to fall in with the theory of the continuity of 
the mediaeval and the existing English Church. The great 
names upon the Calendar belonged not to Rome, but to us ; 
they were part of our national history, and when I was my- 
self asked to assist, the proposal pleased and flattered me. I 
suppose now that the object was to recommend asceticism, 
and perhaps to show that the power of working miracles had 
been continued in the Church until its unity was broken. 
But no such intention was communicated to us. We were 
free to write as we pleased, each on our own responsibility. 
For myself I went to work with the assumption which I 
thought myself entitled to make, that men who had been 



208 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

canonized had been probably good men, and at least remark- 
able men. It was an opportunity for throwing myself into 
medieeval literature, and studying in contemporary writings 
what human life had really been like in this island, in an age 
of which the visible memorials remained in churches and 
cathedrals and monastic ruins. 

I do not regret my undertaking, though I little guessed 
the wilderness of perplexities into which I was throwing my- 
self. I knew that I was entering a strange scene, but antici- 
pation is not sensation, nor had anything which I had hitherto 
read prepared me completely for what I should find. The 
order of nature, whether always unbroken or not, is gener- 
ally uniform. In the lives of the Christian saints the order 
of nature seems only to have existed to give holy men an 
opportunity of showing their superiority to material condi- 
tions. The evidence is commonly respectable. The biogra- 
pher may be a personal friend, or at least the friend of a 
friend ; yet not " Jack the Giant- Killer " or the " Arabian 
Nights " introduces one more entirely into a supernatural 
world. When a miracle occurs, the unbeliever is astonished ; 
the believer, who records the story, sees no more than he 
expects. He looks only to the object, and if the motive is 
sufficient, the more marvellous the event the more likely it 
is to have occurred, and the less it requires proof or critical 
examination. If a sceptic dares to doubt, it is only that he 
may be the more utterly confounded. The accounts are 
given gravely, as if they were of real facts, without grace, 
without imagination, without any of the ornamental work of 
acknowledged invention, — the sublime and ridiculous mixed 
together indiscriminately, with the ridiculous largely predom- 
inating. Was it possible that such stuff could be true ? or 
even intended to be taken for truth ? Was it not rather mere 
edifying reading for the monks' refectories ; the puerile ab- 
surdities thrown in to amuse innocently their dreary hours ? 
Was it not as idle to look for historical truth in the lives of 
the saints as in " Amadis de Gaul " or " Orlando Furioso " ? 



The Lives of the Saints. 209 

It seemed so, and yet it seemed not so. For the great 
saints (or for the small saints where they had founded re- 
lio-ious houses) there were special commemorative services, 
in which their most grotesque performances were not for- 
gotten. It was not easy to believe that men specially called 
reli"-ious, and who considered truth to be one of the duties 
which religion prescribed, could thus deliberately consecrate 
what they knew, and would admit, to be lies. There is a 
class of composition which is not history, and is not con- 
scious fiction — it was produced in old times ; it is produced 
in our times ; it will be produced wherever and as long as 
human society exists — something which honestly believes 
itself to be fact, and is created, nevertheless, by the imagina- 
tion. The stories of the Edda were not felt to be false 
when they were sung in old Danish halls. The genuine 
myth is not invented — is not written — but grows. It be- 
gins from a small seed, and unfolds into form as it passes 
from lip to lip. It is then assigned by tradition to a par- 
ticular person. " The story I tell you came from So-and-So," 
says some one, wishing to give it credibility. " He was on 
the spot and saw or heard it." " So-and-So " may never 
have heard of it ; but the story may still survive and carry 
his name along with it as a further legend. Now, and 
always, remarkable persons become mythical. Anecdotes 
are told of them, almost always inaccurate ; words are as- 
signed to them which they never spoke. Smaller lumi- 
naries are robbed to swell the greatness of the central orb. 
We, in these days of equality, disbelieve in exceptional 
heroes, as the Middle Ages believed in them. Disbelief 
shows itself in scandal. There is a pleasure in finding that 
an eminent man is but a mortal after r11, and proof of weak- 
ness can be discovered if it is wanted. Great qualities, on 
the other hand, are magnetic, and every report, good or 
evil, true or false, about persons possessed of them is likely to 
stick. Hero-woi'ship and saint-worship are honorable forms 
of a universal tendency ; but it is idle to expect from wor- 
14 



210 The Oxford Counter-Eeforination. 

shippers an accurate investigation into fact. Evidently the 
stories which I was studying were legends, though in sober 
prose — legends which were never examined into, because 
it would have been a sin to doubt them. There was one 
sceptic even among the apostles ; but St. Thomas was held 
up as an example to be shunned. According to the doc- 
trines of the Church the spirit of belief was angelic, the 
spirit of doubt was devilish ; and thus in devout ages, and 
in the devout atmosphere of convents and monasteries, the 
volume of spiritual wonders grew unchecked. To balance 
evidence and compare the degrees of it is mere waste of 
time. The evidence of such witnesses is worth nothing, un- 
less they can be produced and cross-examined. The child 
when he has first seen a conjurer, the disciple who has been 
at a spiritualist's seance, cannot report faithfully what has 
passed immediately under his eyes. To have seen some- 
thing which he cannot understand delights him, and he de- 
scribes it with the unconscious omissions and exaggerations 
which make a natural explanation impossible. So it was with 
the hagiologist. He tells his story in good faith. Perhaps 
we have the authentic narrative of an eye-witness. Yet the 
only fact of which we can feel assured is that he believed, 
or professed to believe, that the subject of it worked mira- 
cles. He has a conviction, to begin with, that holy men 
had powers of this kind, and therefore it was a matter of 
course that these powers should have shown themselves. 
Cliaracter is no protection. We may assume that Anselm, 
for instance, would report nothing which he did not suppose 
to be true ; but piety, which is a security for good faith, is 
none against credulity ; or perhaps, if we could have asked 
Anselm, we should have found that his very notion of truth 
was not our notion ; that he meant by truth, truth of idea, 
rather than literal truth of fact. Intellect, again, is no pro- 
tection. Among the saints' biographers are found the great- 
est names in the Church. Athanasius wrote a life of St. 
Anthony ; Bede wrote a life of St. Cuthbert. It is not too 



Tlic Lives of the Sahits. 211 

much to say that both these distinguished men, and the 
thousand smaller men who followed in their tracks, were 
possessed, and that things which were not appeared to them 
as things that were. So it is in our own time. The pious 
Catholic tells us that he cannot resist the evidence for the 
liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius ; that is, any num- 
ber of witnesses can be brought to declare that they have 
seen it. If the smallest civil action in an English court 
of justice turned on the liquefying of blood under similar 
circumstances, and a thousand witnesses swore they had 
seen it, the evidence would go for nothing, unless the sub- 
stance called blood had been examined and analyzed by 
competent chemists, and the process repeated in the pres- 
ence of trained observers. Ordinary spectators see phe- 
nomena every day which to them are equally inexplicable, 
at Maskelyne and Cooke's. Miracles, authenticated by the 
same kind of testimony, and the same degree of it, are 
worked at Lourdes and at Knock, and at saints' shrines, 
and at mesmeric doctors' reception rooms. The testimony of 
credulous and ignorant people in such cases is simply worth- 
less, and the multiplication of nothing remains nothing 
still. As to St. Januarius, it is noticeable that a mira- 
cle, closely resembling that which modern Catholics be- 
lieve, used to be worked in the same Neapolitan territory in 
the Roman times. Horace, describing the various stations 
at which he stopped on his way from Rome to Brindisi, 
says, — 

Dehinc Guatia Lymphis 
Iratis extriicta dedit risusque jocosque, 
Dum fiamma sine thura licpiescere limine sacro 
Persuadere cupit. Credat Judaeus Apella, 
Non ego — namque Deos didici securuni agere cevum ; 
Nee siquid miri faciat natura Deos id 
Tristes ex alto coeli dimittero tecto. 

Cardinal Newman, with the Jew Apella, would have 
believed in the supernatural li(iuefaction of the incense. 
Horace in like manner would '^ laugh and jest " at St. Janu- 



212 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

arius. It is not a matter of proof but of temperament. 
Why should we allow our convictions on the most serious 
of subjects to be influenced by evidence which we should 
not dare to admit if we were deciding a common civil or 
criminal case ? 

For an intending biographer this was a serious discovery. 
I could not rej^eat what I fouud written, for the faith was 
wanting. A spiritualist many years after assured me that 
I could work a miracle myself if I had but faith. Could I 
but have faith in the Great Nothing all things would be 
possible for me — but, alas ! I had none. So with the lives 
of the saints. St. Patrick I found once lighted a fire with 
icicles, changed a Welsh marauder into a wolf, and floated 
to Ireland upon an altar stone. I thought it nonsense. I 
found it eventually uncertain whether Patricius was not a 
title, and whether any single apostle of that name had so 
much as existed. After a short experiment I had to retreat 
out of my occupation, and let the series go on without me. 
But the excursion among the Will-o'-the-wisps of the spir- 
itual morasses did not leave me as it found me. I was 
compelled to see that in certain conditions of mind the 
distinction between objective and subjective truth has no 
existence. An impression is created that it is fit, right, or 
likely that certain things should take place, and the outward 
fact is assumed to correspond with that impression. When 
a man feels no doubt, he makes no inquiry, for he sees no 
occasion for it ; yet his conviction is as complete as the 
most searching investijjation could have made it. His own 
feeling that something is true is to him complete evidence 
that it is true. True it may be ; and yet not true in the 
sense which he attaches to the word. There are several 
kinds of truth. There is the truth of pure mathematics, 
which is perfect as long as it concerns lines or figures which 
exist only as abstractions. There is the truth of a drama 
like " Hamlet," which is literary invention, yet is a true 
picture of men and women. Tliere is the truth of a fable. 



The Lives of the Saints. 213 

There is the truth of an edifying moral tale. There is the 
truth of a legend which has sprung up involuntarily out of 
tlie hearts of a number of people, and therefore represents 
something in their own minds. Finally, there is the dull 
truth of plain experienced fact, which has to be painfully 
sifted out by comparison of evidence, by observation, and, 
when possible, by experiment, and is held at last, after all 
care has been taken, by those who know what truth of fact 
means, with but graduated certainty, and as liable at all times 
to revision and correction. The distinction, commonplace 
as it seems, was forgotten by the hagiologists. It is forgot- 
ten, for that matter, by most historians. All men, when 
their feelings are interested, believe what they wish to 
believe, or what their preconceptions represent to them as 
internally probable. Theologians avow that other methods 
besides examination of evidence are required to establish 
the truths of faith. The truths of faith must be held with 
absolute certitude. The truths of science, the most assured 
of them, are held only as high probabilities ; and the evi- 
dence has therefore to be supplemented by emotion, imagi- 
nation, and speculative reasoning, introduced from adjoining 
provinces. Cardinal Newman describes in his " Grammar 
of Assent " the process by which probabilities are converted 
into certainties; with the help of it he can justify his own 
belief in the miracle at Naples. He can create antecedent 
likelihoods which dispense with completeness of proof, or 
remove antecedent unlikelihoods which call for fuller and 
more minute proofs. It is the theory on which, uncon- 
sciously held, the crop of legends in the Catholic Church has 
grown for century after century, and is growing now luxu- 
riant as ever. It is the theory on which Our Lady is be- 
lieved to be showing herself in France, in Ireland, or more 
recently to the Anglican monks at Llantony. It is not a 
theory by which any truth was ever discovered that can be 
tested, and sifted, and verified by experiment, or applied to 
the practical service of mankind. 



214 The Oxford Counter-Ec/orination. 

And this leads me to say a very few words on a subject 
to which I alluded in an earlier letter ; the question that 
rose fifteen years ago between Cardinal Newman and Charles 
Kiugsley. Mr. Kingsley, writing impetuously as he often 
did, said that the Catholic clergy did not place truth among 
the highest virtues, and he added that Father Newman 
acknowledofed it. Father Newman asked him when he had 
acknowledged it, and a controversy followed in which Kings- 
ley, instead of admitting, as he ought to have done, that he 
had spoken unadvisedly and in too sweeping terms, defended 
himself, and defended himself unsuccessfully. Kingsley, in 
truth, entirely misunderstood Newman's character. New- 
man's whole life had been a struggle for truth. He had 
neglected his own interests ; he had never thought of them 
at all. He had brought to bear a most powerful and subtle 
intellect to support the convictions of a conscience which was 
superstitiously sensitive. His single object had been to dis- 
cover what were the real relations between man and his 
Maker, and to shape his own conduct by the conclusions at 
which he arrived. To represent such a person as careless 
of truth was neither generous nor even reasonable. But 
Newman as little understood his adversary. He was not 
called on, perhaps, to look far into a subject which did not 
concern him. He had been attacked, as he thought, wan- 
tonly. He struck back ; and he struck most effectively. 

Kingsley, however, had passed through his own strug- 
gles. He, too, had been affected at a distance by the agita- 
tions of the Tractarian controversy. He, like many others, 
had read what Newman had written about ecclesiastical 
miracles. The foundations of his own faith had been dis- 
turbed. He was a man of science ; he knew what evidence 
was. He believed that Newman's methods of reasoning 
confounded his perceptions of truth, disregarding principles 
which alone led to conclusions that could be trusted in other 
subjects, and which, therefore, he could alone trust in reli- 
gion. His feelings had been, perhaps, embittered by the 



The Lives of the Saints. 215 

intrusion of religious discord into families in which he was 
interested, traceable all of it to the Oxford movement. He 
himself had determined to try every fact which was offered 
for his belief by the strict rules of inductive science and 
courts of justice ; and every other method appeared to him to 
be treason to his intellect, and to reduce truth, where truth 
of fact was before everything essential, to the truth of fable, 
or fiction, or emotional opinion. This was at the bottom of 
his mind, however unguardedly he expressed himself. He 
was an orthodox Protestant. The outward evidence for the 
Gospel history was strong in itself. It was supplemented 
by the effect which Christianity had produced in the world, 
by the position which it had assumed, and the renovation 
which it had produced in the human heart and character. 
It was supplemented in himself by personal experience. 
He has told me of answers which he had received to his 
prayers. But this, as he was well aware, was evidence to 
himself alone. He stood, practically, on the broad ground 
that religion, that the fear of God, was alone able to make 
alive the nobler part of man's nature. This was plain mat- 
ter of outward exi^erience which the whole history of the 
world could verify. To him, when he was placed as a 
clergyman in the Church of England, the fear of God was 
bound up with the form of religion established in his own 
country. He knew as well as any one that human errors 
were continually forcing themselves into the popular creeds. 
There had been changes in the past, there might be changes 
in the future ; meanwhile, he held fast himself by the Eng- 
lish Church as it had been purified by the Reformers in the 
sixteenth century. In his opinion, to take up again the tra- 
ditions and beliefs which had been then abandoned, was to 
return like the dog to his vomit — a thing impossible to do 
sincerely, a thing impious to attempt to do in wilfulness or 
fancy, and certain to avenge itself by a contemptuous rejec- 
tion of all religion whatever. The Puritans had white- 
washed the churches, broken the windows in which the 



216 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

miracles of the saints had shone in glorious colors, replaced 
the pictures on the walls with plain texts from Scripture. 
They would have no lies either taught or suggested in God's 
house, whatever might be done elsewhere. The Catholic 
reaction, with its decorations, its choral services, its celebra- 
tions, its vestments, its wardrobe of devotional machinery, 
was similarly detestable to Kingsley. If the creed was true, 
DO tone of voice could be too plain and simple in repeating 
facts of such infinite importance. To leave it to be chanted 
by a parcel of boys in surplices could but suggest at last 
that it was not true, as facts are true ; but was on the level 
of sonof or legend like a ballad of Robin Hood. Newman's 
influence had begun the wild dance, and Kingsley had 
always thought of him with a kind of resentment. 

But enous^h of this. I return to the lives of the saints 
and their effect upon myself. The conclusion which I had 
drawn was that ecclesiastical biographers had composed 
their stories with the freedom of epic poets, and that reli- 
gious truths resembled rather the truths of poetry than the 
truths of history. I had been taught by Newman that there 
was no distinction in kind between the saints' miracles and 
the miracles in the Bible. The restoration of the dead man 
to life by touching Elisha's bones corresponded to the 
cures performed by relics. The changing the water into 
wine, the coin in the fish's mouth, the devils in the swine, 
the calming of the storm on the lake, the walking on the 
sea, were stories which, if we met anywhere but where they 
were, we should call legends ; while the power of the saints, 
like that of apostles and prophets, was exerted chiefly in 
healing the sick and raising the dead to life. 

The parallel had been forced upon us to gain credibility 
for the marvels of ecclesiastical history ; but it was natural, 
it was inevitable, that the alternative possibility should now 
suggest itself, that all supernatural stories were legendary 
wherever we found them. Hume's argument, we had been 
already told, was intellectually correct. It was more likely, 



Tlie Lives of the Saints. 217 

as a mere question of human probability, that men should 
deceive or be deceived, than that the continuity of nature 
should have been disturbed. Faith, we had been also told, 
was to come to the assistance of reason, and reverse the 
conclusion ; but faith was not made more easy when the 
burden which it was to carry was enlarged by these volumi- 
nous additions. The authenticity and inspiration of the 
Gospels had been assumed till quite recent times as a fact 
as certain as our own existence. To question either had 
been forbidden by the law of the land, and bibhcal criticism 
had been as impotent as the investigations into the preten- 
sions of holy persons whom the Church had predetermined 
to canonize. So long as the belief remained unshaken, any 
answer sufficed for objections. But the case was now al- 
tered. Great German scholars had come to a widely differ- 
ent conclusion. Very able men of unblemished character, 
here at home and elsewhere, were doubting about it ; and 
this could no longer be concealed. 

To frighten us off, their personal character had been 
libelled. I had been brought up to believe that not even a 
Dissenter could be a really good man, and that unbelievers 
were profligates seeking only an excuse for indulging their 
wicked passions. Such arguments are spectres formidable 
while they produce fear, but provoking reaction and even 
indignation when the ghost is found to be but a stuffed figure 
streaked with phosphorus. It is a very serious thing when 
a man is brought to recognize that truths, which he has been 
taught to look upon as undisputable, are not regarded as 
truths at all by persons competent to form an independent 
opinion. Such questions need not have been raised in this 
country. The Oxford revivalists had provoked the storm, 
but had no spell which would allay it. They did not try to 
allay it. They used it for their own cause. Those whom I 
had known best were now far on their way to Rome. " Either 
us or nothing," they said. " You see where reason leads 
you. You see what has come of the Reformation. If you 



218 The Oxford Counfxr-Reformation. 

do not believe in the Church Catholic and Apostolic, you 
have no right to believe in God — and the Church Catholic 
is the Church of Rome." 

So my friends argued. I could not myself admit the alter- 
native. Difficulties there might be, but they told as heavily 
against Catholics as against Protestants. If the historical 
foundations of Christianity were shaken, the Church of Rome 
vras in as much danger as the Church of England or the Church 
of Scotland. It was in more danger, from the additional load 
of incredibilities which the Protestants had flung from them. 

As a matter of experience Catholic countries had bred 
more infidels than Protestant countries. Voltaire and the 
Encyclopoedists had been pupils of the Jesuits. Vergniaud 
and Barbaroux, Danton and Robespierre, had been taught as 
children to pray to the Virgin and the saints. Charles Kings- 
ley had solid ground under his feet compared with the gilded 
clouds on which the Catholic enthusiasts imagined that they 
were floating into security. 

Newman himself never talked in this wild way. He was 
too conscious of his own obligation to his early teaching. 
Protestantism did, as a fact, sustain the belief in Christian- 
ity, whether its reasonings were sound or unsound ; and he 
was too wise, too seriously in earnest, to press the logic of 
alternatives. He was glad that people should believe any- 
how, and he had never fallen into the scornful note in which 
Evanofelicals had been scoffed at. But what he said and 
what he wrote tended practically to the same end. He was 
surrendering himself to an idea, and was borne along by it 
as if he were riding on a nightmare. Soon after we heard 
that he had himself gone over. He had gone, it seems to 
me (after reading all that he has said about it in the " Apo- 
logia"), as men go when under a destiny, not because their 
intellect has been convinced by evidence and argument, but 
because they are impelled by some internal disposition which 
they suspect while they deny it. His friends might have 
taken the plunge with a light heart. They had been living 



The Lives of the Saints. 219 

in an enchanted circle of thoughts and formulas, and their 
minds for long had never strayed beyond them. Newman's 
intellect was keen and clear as ever. He at least knew 
what he was about. It might have occurred to him to ask 
when the resolution was once taken, " What am I not doing, 
if it is all a dream ! " 

My eldest brother had left to us younger ones, as a char- 
acteristic instruction, that if we ever saw Newman and 
Keble disagree, we might think for ourselves. The event 
which my brother had thought as impossible as that a double 
star should fly asunder in space, had actually occurred. We 
had been floated out into mid-ocean upon the Anglo-Catho- 
lic raft, buoyed up by airy bubbles of ecclesiastical senti- 
ment. The bubbles had burst, the raft was splintered, and 
we — I mean my other brother and myself — were left, like 
Ulysses, struggling in the waves. 

I need not trouble you with our particular fortunes. I 
shall have to write you one more letter, and I shall tell you 
then the little which need be said of my own experiences. 
It was thouglit that when Newman went he would create a 
secession like that of the Free Kirk in Scotland. This was 
a mistake. With him, either before or immediately after, a 
few men did go of known ability : Hope Scott, Frederick 
Faber, Ward of the " Ideal," the two Wilberforces, Robert 
and Henry, and two or three others. The rest, inconsider- 
able in numbers, were Newman's personal disciples, undis- 
tinguished save by piety of life. The seed has grown since, 
and is still growing, chiefly in families of the better classes, 
as they are called, among people who have money enough 
to live upon and nothing to do. Among them the effect 
has been very wide, and to appearance not salutary. Wives 
have quarrelled with their husbands, and husbands with 
wives ; the son has been set against the father, and the 
father against the son ; thousands of households have been 
made miserable by young people dissatisfied with their 
spiritual condition, and throwing themselves upon Catholic 



220 The Oxford Counter-Rcformatio7i. 

priests because they require, as they fancy, something 
deeper and truer " than was enough for the last century." 
Great lords and ladies, weary of the emptiness of their lives, 
have gone to the Church of Rome for a new sensation. Con- 
version has become fashionable. With the help of Ireland 
the Catholics have simultaneously become a power in Par- 
liament. Cardinals and Monsiguors are to be seen in 
London drawing-rooms. Convents and monasteries are 
multiplying. A Catholic tide is still flowing, and no one 
yet can say how far it may rise. It has affected at present 
the idle and the ignorant, and has left untouched the indus- 
trious and intelligent ; but the influence on society has been 
very considerable. 

More remarkable, and infinitely more mischievous, has 
been the general influence of the Tractarian movement on 
the Church of England. It was thought at first that New- 
man's secession had destroyed the party which he had 
called into being. The shepherd was smitten and the sheep 
were scattered. The Evangelicals could say that they had 
been right from the first. Catholic principles led to Rome ; 
they had no place in a Protestant Church. But for the 
clergy sacerdotalism had a fatal attraction : it gave them 
professional consequence; they thought that they could 
keep their wives and their livings and yet recover and wield 
again their old spiritual authority. They rallied from their 
confusion ; they brightened up their churches ; they revo- 
lutionized their rituals. In learning they were more than a 
match for their Low Church antagonists. The courts of 
law were appealed to in vain. The more the history of the 
Reformation was studied, the more plain became the origi- 
nal intention that Catholics who would abjure the Pope 
should be comprehended under the Anglican formulas. The 
Low Church had had their innings ; the High Church have 
now their turn. Had we to live again through the struggle of 
1829, we should no longer speak of Catholic emancipation, 
but of Roman Catholic. The change in the meaning of the 



Tlie Lives of the Saints. 221 

word marks the change in popular opinion. Externally 
the Ritualists have won the battle. They too have their 
absolutions and their masses, and their monks and nuns and 
miracles and the rest; and it has been decided that they 
may keep them. But what a price has the victory cost ! 
The nation has ceased to care what the clergy say or do. 
The Church of England, as part of the constitution of the 
country, has ceased to exist. Political latitudinarianism 
goes on upon its way. The barriers of privilege fall before 
it. The Third Estate of the realm can no more stay the 
stream of change than a rush can stay the current of a river. 
As the Church has become " Catholic," the honored name 
of Protestant has passed to the Nonconformist. The laity 
stand aloof, indifferent and contemptuous. The thinking 
part of it has now a seriousness of its own and a philosophy 
of its own which has also grown and is growing. The old 
order of things might have remained indefinitely had it been 
left undisturbed; but the controversy has undermined its 
traditions. Questions have been provoked which now must 
have a real answer. The clergy magnify their office, but 
the more they make of themselves the less is their intel- 
lectual influence. The great body of the English people, 
which is Protestant to the heart, will never allow their pre- 
tensions ; and while they are discussing among themselves 
the nature of their supernatural commission, they are driv- 
ing science and criticism to ask if there is anything in the 
world supernatural at all. The storm will die away, agita- 
tion is wearisome, and we may subside into a dull acquies- 
cence even with the travestie of ecclesiasticism which is now 
in possession of the field. But the active mind of the coun- 
try will less and less concern itself with a system which it 
despises. A ritualist English Church will be as powerless 
over the lives of the people as the Roman augurs over the 
Rome of Cicero and Caesar ; and centuries will pass before 
religion and common sense will again work together with 



222 The Oxford CounUr-Re formation. 

the practical harmony which existed between them in the 
days of Whately and Arnold, and Hare and Sedgwick. 

This is the substance of what I have to say to you, and 
here I might end; but something is still left which will re- 
quire another letter. 



The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 223 



LETTER VI. 

My dear . My narrative is ended. I have told 

you what I can personally remember of the origin and 
course of the Tractarian movement. I have now to add 
a few more words about the remarkable man whose name 
has been so often mentioned in these letters. I said that I 
thought he had been possessed with a particular idea. His 
own words will explain what I conceive that idea to have 
been. Cardinal Newman is the one thinker of commanding 
intellect who has advised us to seek shelter from the dis- 
tractions of this present age in the Roman Catholic Church. 
A passage in the " Apologia " is a photograph of his inmost 
heart, and explains the premisses of which this is the con- 
clusion. It is long, but it is so beautiful that the reader 
who has never seen it before will wish that it was longer. 
I will say afterwards, in my poor language, why I for one 
could not go with him, but preferred to steer away into the 
open ocean. I believed that it was a siren's song, and that 
the shore from which it came had been strewn for centuries 
with the bones of the lost mariners who were betrayed by 
such enchanting music. 

Starting with the being of God (which is as certain to me as 
the certainty of my own existence, though when I try to put the 
grounds of tliat certainty into logical shape, I find a difficulty in 
doing so, in mood and figure, to my satisfaction), I look out of 
myself into the world of men, and there I see a siglit which fills 
me with unspeakable distress. The world seems simply to give 
the lie to that great truth of which my whole being is so full ; 
and the effect upon me is in consequence, as a matter of necessity, 
as confusing as if it denied that I am in existence myself. If I 



224 The Oxford Coimter-Beformation. 

looked into a mirror and did not see my face, I should have the 
sort of feeling which actually comes upon me when I look into 
this living busy world and see no reflex of its Creator. This is 
to me one of the great difiiculties of this absolute primary truth 
to which I referred just now. Were it not for the voice speak- 
ing so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an 
Atheist, or a Pantheist, or a Polytheist, when I looked into the 
world. I am speaking for myself only, and I am far from deny- 
ing the real force of the arguments in proof of a God, drawn from 
the general facts of human society ; but these do not warm me 
or enlighten me ; they do not take away the winter of my deso- 
lation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, 
and my moral being rejoice. The sight of the world is nothing 
else than the prophet's scroll, full of lamentation, and mourning, 
and woe. 

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various 
history, the many races of men, their starts, their fortunes, their 
mutual alienation, their conflicts ; and then their ways, habits, 
governments, forms of worship, their enterprises, their aimless 
courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the im- 
potent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and 
broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what 
turn out to be great powers or truths ; the progress of things as 
if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the great- 
ness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short dura- 
tion, the curtain hung over his futurity ; the disappointments of 
life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, the pervading idola- 
tries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condi- 
tion of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the 
Apostle's words, "Having no hope, and without God in this 
world ; " all this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts upon 
the mind a sense of profound mystery which is absolutely beyond 
human solution. 

What shall be said of this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering 
fact ? I can only answer that either there is no Creator, or this 
living society of men is, in a true sense, discarded from his pres- 
ence. Did I see a boy of good make and mind, with the token 
on him of a refined nature, cast upon the world without provi- 
sion, unable to say whence he came, his birthplace or his family 
connections, I should conclude that there was some mystery con- 



Tlie Oxford Counter-Reformation. 225 

nected with his history, and that he was one of whom, for one 
cause or another, his parents were ashamed. Thus only should 
I be able to account for the contrast between the promise and 
condition of his being. And so I argue about the world ; if there 
be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in 
some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the 
purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact 
of its existence ; and thus the doctrine of what is theologically 
called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the 
world exists, and as the existence of God. 

And now, supposing it were the blessed and loving will of the 
Creator to interfere in this anarchical condition of things, what 
are the methods which might be necessarily or naturally involved 
in his object of mercy ? Since the world is in so abnormal a 
state, surely it would be no surprise to me if the interposition 
were of necessity equally extraordinary, or what is called miracu- 
lous. But that subject does not directly come into the scope of 
my present remarks. Miracles as evidence involve an argument ; 
and I, of course, am thinking of some means which does not im- 
mediately run into argument. I am rather asking what must be 
the antagonist by which to withstand and baffle the fierce energy 
of passion, and the all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism of the 
intellect in religious inc£uiries. I have no intention at all to deny 
that truth is the real object of our reason ; and that if it does not 
attain to truth, either the premiss or the process is in fault ; but 
I am not speaking of right reason, but of reason as it acts in fact 
and concretely in Mien man. I know that even the unaided 
reason, when correctly exercised, leads to a belief in God, in the 
immortality of the soul, and in a future retribution. But I am 
considering it actually and historically, and in this point of view 
I do not think I am wrong in saying that its tendency is towards 
a simple unbelief in matters of religion. No truth, however 
sacred, can stand against it in the long run ; and hence it is that 
in the Pagan world when our Lord came, the last traces of the 
religious knowledge of former times was all but disappearing 
from those portions of the world in which the intellect had been 
active, and had had a career. 

And in these latter days in like manner, outside the Catholic 
Church, things are tending with far greater rapidity than in that 
old time, from the circumstances of the age, to Atheism in one 
15 



226 The Oxford Coitnter-RefoT7>iation. 

shape or another. What a scene, what a prospect does the whole 
of Europe present at this day ! And not only Europe, but every 
government and every civilization through the world which is 
under the influence of the European mind. Specially, for it most 
concerns us, how sorrowful, in the view of religion, even taken in 
its most elementary, most attenuated form, is the spectacle pre- 
sented to us by the educated intellect of England, France, and 
Germany ! liovers of their country and of their race, religious 
men external to the Catholic Church, have attempted various 
expedients to arrest fierce human nature in its onward course, and 
to bring it into subjection. The necessity of some form of religion 
for the interests of humanity has been generally acknowledged ; 
but where was the concrete representative of things invisible, 
which would have the force and the toughness necessary to be a 
breakwater against the Deluge 1 

Three centuries ago, the establishment of religion — material, 
legal, and social — was generally adopted as the true expedient 
for the purpose in those countries which separated from the 
Catholic Church, and for a long time it was successful ; but now 
the crevices of those establishments are admitting the enemy. 
Thirty years ago ^ education was relied upon. Ten years ago 
there was a hope that wars would cease forever, under the influ- 
ence of commercial enterprise and the reign of the useful and fine 
arts. But will any one venture to say there is anything anywhere 
on this earth which will afford a fulcrum for us whereby to keep 
the earth from moving onwards ? 

The judgment which experience passes on establishments, on 
education, as a means of maintaining religious truth in this anar- 
chical world, must be extended even to Scripture, though Scripture 
be divine. Experience proves surely that the Bible does not an- 
swer a purpose for which it was never intended. It may be acci- 
dentally the means of the conversion of individuals ; but a book, 
after all, cannot make a stand against the wild, living intellect of 
man ; and in this it begins to testify, as regards its own structure 
and contents, to the power of that universal solvent which is so 
successfully acting upon religious establishments. 

Supposing, then, it to be the will of the Creator to interfere in 
human affairs, and to make provision for retaining in this world 
a knowledge of Himself, so definite and distinct as to be proof 
1 This was written in 1865. 



The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 227 

against the energy of human scepticism ; in such a case — I am 
far from saying that there was no other way — but there is 
nothing to surprise the mind, if He should think fit to introduce 
a power into the workl invested with the prerogative of infalli- 
bility in religious matters. Such a provision would be a direct, 
immediate, active, and prompt means of withstanding the diffi- 
culty; it would be an instrument suited to the need; and when 
I find that this is the very claim of the Catholic Church, not only 
do I feel no difficulty in admitting the idea, but there is a fitness 
in it which recommends it to my mind. And thus I am brought 
to speak of the Church's infallibility as a provision adapted by 
the mercy of the Creator to preserve religion in the world; and 
to restrain that freedom of thought which of course in itself is 
one of the greatest of our natural gifts, and to rescue it from its 
o-wai suicidal excesses. And let it be observed that neither here 
nor in what follows shall I have occasion to speak of the revealed 
body of truths, but only as they bear upon the defence of natural 
religion. I say that a power possessed of infallibility in religious 
teaching is happily adapted to be a working instrument in the 
course of human affairs for smiting hard and throwing back the 
immense energy of the aggressive intellect ; and in saying this, 
as in the other things that I have to say, it must still be recol- 
lected that I am all along bearing in mind my main purpose, 
which is a defence of myself. 

It has been said that reason is the faculty which finds rea- 
sons for what we wish to believe, and the saying is true in so 
far as it implies that there are in every human being emo- 
tional and mental tendencies which suggest the premisses of 
arguments, dispose the lights and shadows in which external 
facts shall appear, and make conclusions appear to one per- 
son to be satisfactorily made out when to another they shall 
seem resting upon air. I believe that the passage which you 
have just read explains Newman's history. When he came 
to see the condition of the world into which he was thrown 
the aspect of it was unspeakably distressing. His whole 
efforts have been spent in finding a solution of the problem 
which would make existence on such terms less intol- 
erable. 



228 The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 

On the same broad ground on which Cardinal Newman 
places himself, I will shift the lights, and let the shadows 
fall the other way. Following his own analogy of the out- 
cast boy, I will suppose a reasonable being with foculties 
limited like ours, with a belief in God like ours, but with 
no more immediate knowledge, suddenly introduced from 
another planet into our own earth, confronted with the phe- 
nomena which Cardinal Newman describes, and asked for 
an explanation of them, consistent with his religious convic- 
tion. Would such a being infer that the race which he was 
studying was implicated in some terrible aboriginal calam- 
ity? I do not see how the inference would help him. I 
think if he was wise he would feel his inability to give any 
explanation at all. But I suppose that before attempting 
the problem he would look into the past history of the earth, 
and into the various races of animated beings by which it 
was occupied. lie would see that man is only the highest 
of many varieties ; that he is made on the same type as a 
larsfe class of other animals ; that as their bodies are a 
clumsy likeness of man's body, so their minds are a clumsy 
likeness of his mind. If he looked into the habits of these 
animals he would find no law among them but violence, no 
rif^ht but strength ; no sign of disinterested affection, no ob- 
ject save the gratification of hunger or lust ; the will and 
appetite of each creature only held in check by the will and 
appetite of other creatures more powerful ; one generation 
exactly like another, with no capacity for looking forward, 
or accumulating knowledge and experience. 

Turnino- next to man, he would observe, too, that he had 
the same animal nature. In many countries he would see 
that the habits of man were scarcely superior to those of 
the beings below him, that he was savage and ignorant as 
they, and that his progenitors from immemorial time had 
lived in the same way. Going back to the earliest traces of 
human life, the rude flint instruments, the cave dwellings, 
and such other memorials as survive, he would infer that 



The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 229 

the primitive men everywhere had been as the savages are 
now, the nature which they shared with other animals en- 
tirely predominating; that not a vestige was to be found of 
any higher civilization which had once existed and had de- 
cayed ; that the lower animals had come into being for many 
ages before man ; that man himself had risen slowly from 
the animal's level to the position which he now occupies. 
Supposing then Cardinal Newman to have drawn a fair 
picture of the world as it stands at present, would the in- 
quirer be likely to think that the human race was like a 
boy of whom its parents were ashamed ? He would be un- 
able to form the slightest idea why or how such a race had 
been created ; but he would see that in addition to the qual- 
ities of other creatures men had capacities of memory, of 
moral sense and reason ; that having been furnished with 
these capacities, they had been left to raise themselves by 
their own exertions ; and that by fits and starts, sometimes 
springing forward, sometimes even seeming to recede, they 
had made their way to their existing state, a state falling far 
short of imaginary perfection, but far elevated also above 
the point from which they had set out ; the defects only 
proving that the victory of the higher over the lower nature 
was still incomf)lete. He would see that man with all his 
faults had not only been able to acquire a knowledge of 
Nature, but had learnt to rule the elements, to make the 
lightning carry his messages, and persuade fire and water 
to bear him over sea and land ; that he had learnt to 
rule his own appetites, to form notions of justice, to feel 
love and compassion, and indignation at wrong; that he had 
even raised his eyes to heaven, and had formed conceptions 
which had grown purer and more spiritual as his knowledge 
extended of his Maker's will and nature. 

I am nut the least pretending that this has been the actual 
history of man in this planet, but it is unquestionably the 
opinion which a stranger would form coming into it from 
without, and drawing his inferences from the facts which 



230 Tlu Oxford Counter-Eeformation. 

he would find. Far from thinking that the being whose 
nature he was studying was suffering from some fundamen- 
tal calamity, he would conclude rather that man was in a 
state of discipline for the exercise of his powers, and slowly, 
through conscience and intellect, was rising to a knowledge 
of God. Man sins, it is true, and sin is an offence against 
God ; but it is an offence only because the being capable of 
it has acquired a conception of a moral law. By the law 
sin entered ; and the self-reproach of the sinner is the recog- 
nition of his obligations. The actions which are sinful in 
us are not sinful in themselves, but only in reference, as 
Butler says, to the nature of the agent. Murder and in- 
cest, robbery, cunning, rage, a*nd jealousy are not sinful in 
animals. They tear each other in pieces, and we find from 
their anatomical structure that they were intended to do it. 
Man as an animal inherits the same dispositions ; as an 
intellectual and moral being he has conquered them par- 
tially if not yet entirely, and so far from giving signs that 
he has fallen from any higher state, analogy and reason 
would rather suggest that he was on the way to a higher state. 

This, I say, is the impression which an indifferent sj^ec- 
tator would be at least as likely to form about mankind 
and their situation, as to think with Cardinal Newman that 
mankind were outcasts, that their intellect was their most 
dangerous enemy. 

Leaving the spectator then, let me go on for myself. 
Cardinal Newman says that the intellect is naturally scepti- 
cal ; that it destroyed the faith of the old world ; that it is 
destroying still more rapidly the faith of modern society, 
and that religion can only be saved by some power which 
can smite the intellect back and humble it. Is this true ? 
Is it not ratlier true that the intellect is the enemy only 
of falsehood ? That if it keeps watch over religion, if it is 
jealous of novelties and unpi'oved assertions, if it instinc- 
tively dreads lies, and lies in religion most of all because 
such lies are most mischievous, it is because experience 1ms 



The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 231 

shown that without unceasing watchfulness religion degener- 
ates into suj^erstition^ and that of the cankers which corrupt 
human character superstition is the worst. 

Religious knowledge has grown like all other knowledge. 
Partial truths are revealed or discovered. They are thouo-ht 
to be whole truth, and are consecrated as eternal and com- 
plete. We learn better, we find that we were too hasty, 
and had mistaken our own imaginations for ascertained 
realities. " No truth, however sacred," Cardinal Newman 
says, "can stand against the reason in the long run, and 
hence it is that in the pagan world, when our Lord came, 
the last traces of the religious knowledge of former times 
was all but disappearing from those portions of the world 
where the intellect was active and had had a career." What 
is the fact ? In the early stages of the Greek and Roman 
nations certain opinions had been formed about the gods ; 
and certain religious services had been instituted. In these 
traditions there was much that was grand and beautiful ; 
there was much also that was monstrous and incredible. As 
civilization developed itself both conscience and intellect 
protested and declared that the pagan theology could not 
be wholly true. If the Olympian gods existed, they were 
not beings whom it was possible to reverence ; and the 
established creed having broken down, men were left face 
to face with nature, to learn from fact what the Divine ad- 
ministration of this world really was. They might be at a 
loss for an answer, and the grosser natures among them 
might be demoralized by absolute unbelief; but the diffi- 
culty itself had risen not from impiety but from piety. 
They had become too enlightened to attribute actions to the 
gods which they despised or condemned in one another. 
Was this scepticism ? It was a scepticism then which was 
shared by the apostles, who called the heathen gods devils. 
As Tennyson says — 

There lies more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. . 



232 The Oxford Counter-Beformation. 

The unbelief in the Roman Empire, when our Lord came, 
was a Prceparatio Evangelica. Great and good men disbe- 
lieved, not because they hated religion and wished to be rid 
of it, but because they would not call evil good, nor paradox 
a sacred mystery. The recognition that certain things were 
not true was the first step towards acceptance of what was 
true; and the ready hearing which Christianity met with 
proves the eagerness with which light was being looked for. 
Horace is a typical Roman of the intellectual sort, an 
Epicurean, and an unbeliever in the established religion. 
Horace says — 

Dis te minorem quod geris, imperas. 
Hinc omne principium, hue refer exitum. 

Di multa neglecti dederunt 

Hesperise mala luctuosye. 

This is not the language of acquiescence in atheism. 
Christianity grew because the soil was ready prepared, be- 
cause the intellect "had had a career," and had broken the 
back of superstition. The teachers of a new religion would 
have had but a short shrift in the days when Calchas could 
sacrifice Iphigenia. Special doctrines of the Christian faith 
had even begun to form independent of it. In Caesar's time 
few cultivated men believed in a future life,. Under the 
Antonines the most intellectual men of their asje had come 
to believe it ; and intellect had led them to the gate of the 
Christian Church. As it was in the first century so it had 
been in the sixteenth. Again the truth had been crusted 
over with fictions. Again the intellect rose in protest, and 
declared that incredibilities should not be taught any longer. 
But they cleared away the falsehood as they broke the 
painted windows in the churches, only that the clear light 
of heaven mio;ht shine the brighter. Even Cardinal New- 
man himself has been, perhaps unwillingly, under the same 
influence. He professes horror at the thought of an auto- 
da-fe, and personally is unable to believe that such offerings 



The Oxford Counter-Reformation. 233 

could be approved of by such a being as he supposes God to 
be. But these " acts of faith " were once regarded as right- 
eous and necessary by the infallible authority which is to 
prevent us from thinking for ourselves. 

The human intellect, I believe, will never voluntarily part 
with truth which has been once communicated. It hates 
lies, lies especially which come to it armed with terror in the 
place of argument. Possibly, in some instances, when it has 
found truth itself in bad company, its suspicions may have 
been roused without occasion. Falsehood, it has been said, 
is no match for truth, but it may be more than a match for 
truth and authority combined. Between men of intellect and 
priesthoods there has seldom been good agreement. Each 
regards the other as intruding upon his special domain. 
Priests and prophets went on ill together under the old 
dispensation. The prophet denounced the priest as a ritu- 
alist. The priest murdered the prophet with the help of 
popular superstition. 

But Cardinal Newman tells us that intellect is unbeliev- 
ing, that it needs to be smitten back and humbled, and that 
he finds the Catholic Church peculiarly constituted for the 
purpose. God is estranged from the world. He takes pity 
on its lost state by establishing in the Church a special rep- 
resentative of Himself. We know how it is with mankind 
generally, from the want of religion which appears in their 
conduct. If the Church is to show us how to live better, we 
may, we must, expect to find in the Church not a teacher 
only but an example, for if it be no better than the world, 
then we have the same reason for supposing God to be 
estranged from the Church. Cardinal Newman refers us 
especially to the condition of the countries which separated 
from Rome in the sixteenth century. Are the countries 
which remained in the Papal communion superior morally 
to those who left it? The bishops and priests had the edu- 
cation of France entirely in their hands after the Revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes. The result was the generation who 



234 The Oxford Coimter-Rcformation. 

made the Reign of Terror and abolished Christianity. Ger- 
many and England and America are not all which they ought 
to be ; but is Catholic Ireland much better, or Catholic Spain ? 
or Italy, which till a few years ago was more Catholic than 
either of them ? 

We have Church history, for now eighteen hundred years ; 
or, if we choose to put it so, from the constitution of the 
Israelite nationality. What the Israelites were their own 
records testify. So far as conduct went they were like other 
nations. They had good kings and bad, good priests and bad, 
true prophets and false. They had their periods of idolatry. 
They had their periods of outward repentance and ceremo- 
nial punctiliousness. But when truth came among them, 
they had no special power of recognizing it, nor special will 
to welcome it. The heads of the Church rejected our Lord : 
the publicans and sinners received him. Of the ten lepers 
who were cleansed, nine went to the priests : one only gave 
glory to God, and he was a Samaritan. The priest and 
Levite passed by the wounded man ; the Samaritan had 
mercy on him. In Christian times the depositories of the 
infallibility which is to keep intellect in order have been the 
popes and bishops, speaking through their councils and act- 
ing throuo-h the ecclesiastical courts. When we look into the 
accounts of what these persons were, we find the same in- 
equalities which are to be met with in all combinations of men, 
and in all human institutions; here, as elsewhere, we find 
saints and sinners : in one generation noble endeavors after 
holiness ; in another worldliness, luxury, intrigue, ambition, 
tyranny, even ferocious cruelty. Unless Catholic writers 
have combined to calumniate their mistress, Rome was as 
venal under the popes as Jugurtha found her under the 
Republic ; and the Church courts were a byword for 
iniquity in every country in Europe. The religious orders, 
which were founded expressly to exhibit a pattern of saintly 
life, became too corrupt to be allowed to continue in exist- 
ence. When the printing-press was invented, and the Bible 



T/ie Oxford Counter-Reformation. 235 

came to be read by the people, the contrast was so violent 
between religion as exhibited in the New Testament and 
religion as taught and exercised by the infallible Church that 
half Europe broke away from it. Cardinal Newman's theory 
implies that tlie Keformation was the rebellion of the intel- 
lect against the spiritual authority which was in charge of it. 
The authority must have done its work but ill if it had bred 
a generation of apostates. The Holy See when it found its 
power endangered behaved as ordinary human potentates 
behave on such occasions, and potentates not of the best 
kind. She filled Europe with wars. She stirred princes to 
massacre their subjects. The rack, the gibbet, and the stake 
were her instruments of persuasion as long as she had strength 
to use them. When her strength began to fail, she tried con- 
spiracy and murder ; and only now, in these late times, when 
the despised intellect has created a tribunal to which she 
is answerable in the public opinion of mankind, has she 
reformed her own manners and attempted to explain away 
her atrocities. 

Well for her that these sad methods have been abandoned. 
Were the Church to treat but one man or woman in these 
days of ours as three centuries ago she treated tens of thou- 
sands, she would be rent in pieces by the common indigo-na- 
tion of the entire human race. As it is, she remains doino- 
the work which is still appointed foj- her. But if an institu- 
tion with such a history behind it is an exceptional instrument 
to bear witness to God's existence ; if it be the voice through 
which alone He speaks to man, and makes known His na- 
ture and His will ; then the attempt to understand this 
world, and what goes on in it, had better be abandoned in 
despair. 



ORIGEN AND CELSUS. 



When the seed of the forest tree begins to germinate, and 
the cotyledons burst their ligaments and lift themselves into 
light, the growing plant thenceforward gathers its nutriment 
out of the air. The massive trunk of the oak which has 
stood for a thousand years, is composed chiefly of vapors 
absorbed through the leaves and organized into fibre by 
the cunning chemistry of nature. Some few mineral sub- 
stances enter into its composition, and are taken up out of 
the soil through the roots. But these grosser elements are 
slight in comparison with those of more ethereal origin; 
how slight, may be measured by the handful of dust which 
remains when the log has been consumed in the furnace, 
and the carbon and hydrogen have returned to the source 
from whence they came. An animal is formed of the same 
materials, and is developed by analogous laws. A single 
cell with the force called life in it collects a congregation of 
gaseous atoms, and out of the atoms fashions a man. Men, 
again, are taken hold of by a further action of the living 
principle, and are formed into families and nations, societies 
and institutions ; each held together by vital force, and dis- 
solving when the force disappears. But all of them, indi- 
viduals and nations alike, are made out of atoms lent to 
tliem for a while out of the aerial envelope of the globe, to 
be reclaimed after a brief incarnation. The smallest urn 
suffices to preserve such remnants of a man as cannot be 
decomposed into vapor. 



238 Origen and Cdsus. 

Spiritual organizations are the counterpart of the material. 
Intellect and imagination are forever scattering in millions 
the seeds of aspirations or speculations. From time to time 
some one out of these millions is "brought to bear," and 
becomes a theory of politics, a system of philosophy, a tra- 
dition, a poem, or a creed. The idea is the life ; the organ- 
*ized form is assimilated out of the opinions and desires 
already floating in the minds of mankind. Some root in 
fact there may be. But the facts which can be seen, and 
handled, and verified by experience, are infinitesimally small. 
Accidental conditions may be needed to quicken an idea 
into an active force. But when once the idea has begun to 
grow, and organic tissue to be formed, the sole source of 
nourishment is again the spiritual — air. 

It was once supposed that man was made of clay ; that 
all things which had visible form and bulk were formed out 
of elements possessing a property of solidity ; that air could 
not become solid, nor solids become air ; and much illusory 
physiology was based on this hypothesis. There has been 
similar waste of labor and ingenuity in looking for histori- 
cal facts as the basis of national traditions. The facts which 
we discover will not account for the consequences which 
seemed to erow of them. The Romans traced their Romu- 
lus to the gods ; the modern popular historian regards Romu- 
lus as a robber shepherd ; but he has still to explain whence 
the idea came which developed the shepherd's descendants 
into an imperial race ; and when he looks for his reasons in 
the " soil," in the circumstances of their situation, he is like 
a man who would find the secret of the tree in its ashes, or 
would explain the lifting of the Himalayas by a force which 
would not elevate a mole-heap. The philosophy of history 
is gradually discerning that the amount of fact discoverable 
in early legends is extremely small, and that when discov- 
ered it is extremely unimportant. Legends are perceived to 
have risen out of the minds, and characters, and purposes of 
the people to whom they belong, and are only interesting 



Origen and Celsus. 239 

as tliey show what those minds, and characters, and pur- 
poses were. In like manner, theological critics are throw- 
ing away valuable effort over the facts supposed to underlie 
the origin of Christianity. They forget the simile of the 
grain of mustard-seed to which the kingdom of heaven was 
compared by Christ himself; and they seek for the living in 
the dead. They sift the Gospel to separate the true from 
the false. They desire to ascertain precisely the events 
which occurred in Palestine eighteen or nineteen centuries 
ago ; and such events as survive the process, and can be ac- 
cepted after passing through the critical crucible, will be but 
ash or charred cinders. The truth, as it was, can never be 
discovered. The historical inquirer can look only through 
the eyes of the early Christian writers ; and those writers 
neither saw as he sees, nor judged as he judges. The his- 
torical inquirer sees with the eye of reason ; the early Chris- 
tian saw with the eye of faith. The historical inquirer is 
impartial ; the early Christian was enthusiastic and prepos- 
sessed. The historical inquirer demands evidence such as 
would satisfy a British jury in a criminal case ; to the early 
Christian the life, and death, and resurrection of Christ were 
their own evidence, each detail of it the symbol of some 
spiritual reality, and every event of it intrinsically probable 
as it availed for the edification and elevation of the human 
soul. Thus the data do not exist to establish an evidential 
conclusion. The early Christians did not inquire, and 
therefore have left no record of inquiry. St. Paul was con- 
verted by a vision. The vision was sufficient for him, and 
he pointedly abstained from examining witnesses or strength- 
ening his conviction by outward testimony. To us the ulti- 
mate fact is the existence of belief — belief created by such 
evidence as was convincing to the minds of the first converts. 
The evidence was sufficient for them, but they did not 
argue as we argue; their methods of inference were not 
our methods of inference ; we can see only Christianity 
coming into existence as a living force ; and, as of the oak 



240 Origen and Celsus. 

tree, we do not ask, Is it true or is it false? we ask. Is it 
alive ? so with Christianity, we see a spiritual germ, quick- 
ened suddenly into active being, which grew and took pos- 
session of the human race, overthrowing every other force 
with which it came into collision, and eventually revolution- 
izing the entire character of human thought and energy. 
Life is not truth merely, but it is, as Plato says, to iTTLKetva 
rrj<s aX-qOu'X'i, something above truth and more than truth ; 
a force in visible operation wliich remains a mystery to the 
intellect; and it is immortal, not as the properties of the 
circle are immortal, but as it propagates itself in eternal 
descent, body after body which it has animated successively 
perishing, but forever reorganizing itself anew in fresh and 
developed forms. The individual oak tree grows old. Its 
functions become torpid. Its boughs clothe themselves more 
scantily with leaves. It ceases to expand. At length it de- 
cays, and is resolved into the elements. But it has dropped 
its acorns from its branches, and in the acorn it lives again, 
in a new body, the essential qualities unchanged, the unes- 
sential and accidental passing away into other combinations. 
The Christianity of the first century was, and yet was not, 
the Christianity of the fourth century. The Christianity of 
the fourth century was, and yet was not, the Christianity of 
feudal Europe. The Christianity of feudal Europe died at 
the Reformation, and was born again in Protestant Chris- 
tianity. Even things which we call dead are still subject to 
the eternal laws of change. Forces are forever at work, 
integrating and disintegrating the atoms of which the in- 
organic world is composed. Only in the intellectual abstrac- 
tions of geometry, or in numbers which have no existence 
save in the conceptions of the intellect, do we find proposi- 
tions of which we can predicate with certainty unalterable 
truth. Whatever ha«! its beinoj in time and space is under 
the conditions of transiency ; but the transient is interpen- 
etrated with life ; every living thought which has quick- 
ened into vital organization, and has developed into flower 



Origen and Celsus. 241 

and fruit, renews its energies while time endures ; and, in 
the strictest sense of the words, the gates of death do not 
prevail against it. 

Religion, as a rule of life, neither is, nor can be, a record 
of events which once occurred on a corner of this planet. It 
is the expression and statement of our duties to one another, 
and of our relations to the Sovereign Power which has called 
us into existence. And these duties and these relations are 
not conditions which once were or which will be hereafter. 
They are conditions of our present being, as much as what we 
call the laws of nature. For the laws of bodily health we are 
not dependent on the observations of Galen, or the history of 
the plague at Athens. We learn from present experience, as 
Galen himself learnt, and we refer to the records of the past 
only as a single chapter in the vast volume of our instruc- 
tions. The evidence of the truth of religion is not the testi- 
mony of this or that person who saw, or thought he saw, 
long ago, something which seemed to him an indication of a 
supernatural presence. The evidence is the power which 
lies in a religion to cope with moral disease, to conquer and 
bind the brutal appetites and intellectual perversities of man, 
and to lift him out of grossness and self-indulgence into 
higher and nobler desires. This was what Christianity 
effected as no creed or system of philosophy ever did before 
or has done since, and Christianity was thus, as Goethe de- 
clares, beyond comparison the grandest work which was ever 
accomplished by humanity. It is a height, he says, from 
which, having once risen to it, mankind can never again 
descend ; and thus of all studies the most interesting to us 
is that of the conditions under which so extraordinary a 
force developed itself. 

Within historical times the earth has never seen — let us 
hope it may never see again — such a condition of human 
society as prevailed in the Roman Empire during the cen- 
turies which elapsed between the Crucifixion and the con- 
version of Constantino. When we look back over distant 
16 



242 Origen and Cclsus. 

periods the landscape is foreshortened, and we discern but 
the elevated features of it. The long level intervals, where 
common life was the most busy, are lost to us almost entirely. 
We have the list of emperors, with their various achieve- 
ments ; the light falls into the palaces ; we catch glimpses of 
questionable palace ladies, of intriguing favorites, and ambi- 
tious statesmen ; we see the dagger, cord, or poison cup which 
removed prince after prince to make room for his successor 
with horrid uniformity. We read of invasions by barbarians, 
of fierce battles on the Danube, or the Euphrates, and the 
frontier advancing or receding. The units which form the 
sum of mankind we do not see ; they are of small significance 
save to themselves and their families. In hundreds of mil- 
lions they play their little parts upon the stage, and pass away 
and are forgotten because no one cares to notice or speak of 
them. Yet it is of these multitudes that humanity consists, 
and by the thoughts obscurely working in the minds of them 
the destinies of humanity are eventually controlled. In the 
centuries of which I speak ten generations of men were born 
and lived and died. The empire was sprinkled with cities, 
towns, villages, and farmsteads, all thronged like anthills, and 
in a fair state of outward civilization. Political discontent 
was rare and easily suppressed. Order was moderately main- 
tained, and was disturbed only by occasional bands of robbers. 
Men of fortune resided on their estates, shot and hunted, 
went to the watering-places in hot weather, and kept 
their yachts. Merchants and manufacturers made money. 
Artisans and shopkeepers pursued their various trades. 
Peasants tilled their wheatfields or their vineyards. School- 
masters or family tutors drilled the boys. State-j)aid pro- 
fessors taught in the universities. Philosophers wrangled. 
Priests presided in the shrines and temples, and held pro- 
cessions and celebrations on holydays. Peace, quiet, in- 
dustry, was everywhere, with an air of grace and harmonious 
culture ; and below the surface was a condition of morality, 
at least among the educated classes, which words cannot 



Origen and Celsus. 243 

describe or modern imagination realize. IMoral good and 
moral evil were played with as fancies in the lecture rooms ; 
but they were fancies merely, with no bearing on life. The 
one practical belief was that pleasure was pleasant. By 
pleasure was meant the indulgence of the senses ; and the 
supremest enjoyment which art and philosophy combined 
to recommend, was the most loathsome and unmentionable 
of vices. The poor may have been protected from the 
worst contamination by the necessities of hard work, the 
ignorant by the simplicity of their understanding. But 
so far as culture " cast its shadow," the very memory 
disappeared that there was any evil except bodily pain, or 
any good save in sensuality. The supreme deity led the 
way in impurity. The inferior divinities followed the ex- 
ample, which descended from them into the palace of the 
emperors. Adrian and Antinous were but another, and 
alas ! more real, Zeus and Ganymede. The Stoics preached 
austerity ; the Academics, virtue ; the Platonists, the aspira- 
tion after the ideal. Stoics, Academics, Platonists, were as 
vicious in practice as the pampered legionary who scoffed 
at their speculations. In the schools of Athens, where the 
most gifted youths in the Empire came to be educated in 
the worship of the beautiful, the professors illustrated their 
lessons by the practical corruption of their pupils. Freely 
as Lucian scattered his sarcasms over all classes of society 
except the lowest, he reserves his choicest arrows for the 
philosophers. Of all kinds of men who had fallen under 
the range of Lucian's eye, the philosophers were the worst. 
The nearest in infamy after them, and but a single degree 
better, were the priests and ministers of the established re- 
ligion. Men of ability had long ceased to believe in the 
Olympian gods. Men of ability. Epicureans all or most of 
them, believed in nature and natural laws. They believed 
in experience, they believed in what their senses told them 
— what lay beyond they regarded as a dream. But reli- 
gion was still a convenient instrument to preserve the peace 



244 Origen and Celsiis. 

of the Empire. The majority of mankind were fools, and 
would continue fools. The belief in imaginary supernatural 
beings, who might reward or punish in another world, was 
a check on the passions of the strong, a consolation to the 
weak in their sufferings. Even if superstition was mis- 
chievous in itself it could not be eradicated. The accepted 
traditions therefore were preserved and treated with affected 
respect. The more outrageous features were softened into 
allegory. The new creeds and deities with which the spread 
of the Empire brought the Romans in contact were pro- 
tected and patronized, and enthusiasm and religious excite- 
ment were allowed play within reasonable limits. The 
mysteries of Ceres and Dionysus superseded the old Temple 
worship. Serapis was admitted to equality with the Olym- 
pians. The Caesars were taken into heaven and carried up 
their favorites with them. For the most part there was an 
outward show of decency, but the creed was a conscious 
imposture. The ceremonial became infected more and more 
with the general impurity, and the Mysteries, which per- 
haps originally arose from a desire for something purer and 
better, became a veil at last for the most detestable orgies. 
When Adrian's " favorite " Antinous died, the Egyptians 
built a town and shrine in his honor, and Antinopolis 
became a scene of miracles as constant as those at Lourdes. 
At this point religion had perhaps reached its nadir — lower 
than this it has never descended upon earth. The degrada- 
tion was now as complete as the genius of evil could make 
it. The shocked conscience of mankind, never wholly 
extinct, was already kindling into resentment ; and as in 
political catastrophes revolution is nearest when tyranny is at 
its worst, so in moral putrefaction the germs are quickening 
of a new order of things. There is this difference only, that 
the overthrow of a government is swift and sudden ; the 
regeneration of character is slow and deliberate. Politi- 
cal convictions disappoint expectation. The enthusiasm of 
revolt is a conflagration which expires when the fuel is 



Origen and Celsus. 245 

consumed. A religious revolution advances steadily in the 
hearts of mankind, and each step that is gained is a conquest 
finally achieved. Lucian was able to see that some vast 
religious change was approaching ; but Lucian could not 
discern the direction from which it was cominfj. Chris- 
tianity was working in a sphere too low for him. Spiritual 
regeneration begins naturally among the poor and the humble, 
for it begins in the strata of society which are least corrupt. 
First individuals are found intent on reformingr their own 
wretched lives, with no thought of converting the world. 
Individuals gather circles about tliem. The circles spread 
and lay down rules for themselves and simple formulas of 
doctrine. The material lies scattered everywhere ready to 
organize. The supreme idea which can assimilate it is 
found at last, but not immediately. There are false starts : 
spurious seed is sown with the good, and springs up as 
weeds. Tentatively, gradually, and after severe competi- 
tion, the fittest survives. 

From the moment of the final conquest of Asia by the 
Romans, when the Asiatic and European philosophers were 
brought in contact, an intellectual fermentation had been 
active. Theosophic theories were formed in infinite variety, 
some fanciful and withering in a season ; some strong, like 
Manicheism, and protracting a vigorous existence for centu- 
ries. Enthusiasts, impostors, prophets, started up, " boasting 
themselves to be somebody." Enchanters, magicians, necro- 
mancers, dealers with spirits, were everywhere making fame 
and fortune out of sick souls pining for knowledge of the 
invisible world. The most illustrious of these Caeliostros of 
the old world, Apollonius of Tyana and Alexander of Aboni- 
tichus, blazed into a splendor which shone over the whole 
Empire. 

Into the midst of this strange scene of imposture, profli- 
gacy, enthusiasm, and craving for light, Christianity emerged 
out of Palestine with its message of lofty humility. The quack 
prophets claimed to be gods or sons of God. They carried 



246 Origen and Celsus. 

their credentials with them in the form of pomp and power. 
They worked miracles, they invited fools to worship them, 
and in return they promised the faithful infinite rewards of 
gold and pleasure. The teachers of Christianity called them- 
selves also apostles of a son of God ; but their Son of God 
was a village carpenter, who had lived in sorrow and had 
died on the cross, and their message was a message never 
heard before on earth. It was to invite their fellow-men to 
lead new lives, to put away sin, to separate themselves from 
the abominations of the world, to care nothing for wealth and 
to be content with poverty, to aim only at overcoming, each 
for himself, his own sensuality and selfishness ; to welcome 
pain, want, disease, everything which the world most shrank 
from, if it would assist him in self-conquest, and to expect 
no reward, at least in this life, save the peace which would 
arise from the consciousness that he was doing what God 
had commanded. 

Such a message naturally found readiest acceptance among 
those whom ignorance had protected from philosophy ; who 
had lived in hardship, and had been least enervated by what 
was called pleasure. Rich men could not easily abandon 
substantial enjoyments in pursuit of so imaginary an object 
as the elevation of their characters. Men of intellect had 
heard too much of sons of God, and had seen too many of 
them, to attach significance to the alleged appearance of 
another in Judasa. 

The early Christian converts were those who had little to 
part with, whose experiences of life were hard already, and 
who found the hardness of their lot made more bearable by 
the knowledge that want and sorrow were no evils, and 
might be actually good for them. Intellectually they were 
called on to believe nothing which in itself was difficult. 
Such men knew nothing of science or of laws of nature. 
The world as they knew it was a world already full of signs 
and wonders. There was nothing wonderful in the coming 
to earth of a Son of God, for the Jews had been told to 



rig en and Celsus. 247 

expect Him; and the Gentiles believed that He had come 
in the person of Augustus Coesar. A miracle was as little 
improbable in itself as any other event. The heroes had 
risen from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and were 
seen as stars nightly in the sky. The only distinction 
between the wonders of Christianity and the wonders which 
they already believed, was that the spirits with whose oper- 
ations they had been hitherto ftimiliar, were evil or mischiev- 
ous spirits, or spirits at best indifferent to good. In the new 
revelation the spirits of God were seen taking part in the 
direction of human affairs, and defeating the powers of dark- 
ness in their own world. Thus the doctrine announced was 
precisely of the kind which the hearers were prepared to re- 
ceive ; and it was preached in perfect good faith, because the 
teachers were on the same intellectual level with their audi- 
ence. They were men of noble natural disposition, natural 
gifts, natural purity of mind, but they were unlearned. They 
knew nothing of science or art, and, with the exception of 
St. Paul, nothing of literature, nothing of politics, nothing 
of the world around them. St. Paul had been well edu- 
cated, yet his scientific knowledge had been carried only far 
enouo-h to betray him into error, when he illustrated the 
resurrection of the body from the growth of a grain of 
wheat, which he supposed to die and rise again. Contem- 
porary naturalists were as well aware then as now, that if 
the grain was dead it would not rise again. 

In its earliest stages the Church absorbed the common 
superstitions of its day ; as converts multiplied, the circle of 
its horizon widened, and it gathered into itself and remodelled 
after its own likeness the prevailing speculations of the times 
and the prevailing practices. The birth of Christ was fixed 
at the winter solstice, when already a universal festival was 
held for the birth of the sun and the beginning of the new 
year. In place of the heathen mysteries there were the 
Christian mysteries of the Sacraments. Philosophers said 
that the root of evil lay in matter ; that the appetites which 



2\H Oriyai and Oclsus. 

\v,{] (,(> sill wcrn jifD'clioim of tlio floHli, which histod n^ninHt 
(ho Hpiiil. ( 'lirlsli;inily :i('('(1|)I(m1 jlic theory, ('Xj)la'm<!<l flic 
fact hy AdiuiTH I'mII, jukI f\»iiii(l ;i rcincdy in the, vir<^iii-horu 
body of Clirisl, vviiic.h, hciiig fifoiicr.itcd free from the clTocts 
of Aduin'H HJii, niHuincd its juiiity, became the myHtical body 
of the ('liiirch, Mild (lie food, tiiroiijjjli traiisid)Ht:u»ti:i.lion, of 
th(>, bclicvci'. The; 'rriiiily was taUcii over from tlio IMaio- 
iiisls, \vli(» liad already sliaped it into form. A sti'anij;e and 
painlnl opinion liad spread out of rii<enieia. over tlie (Jrciok 
an<l Ivoman world, lliat tin; ujods rciinircd, as a condition of 
any special I'avoi", ihe sacrilieo of some; pare and innocent 
himian victim. TiiiM dark belief had hvv.u tlie growth of 
eompafaiively HM-ent centnries, bn( i( was laying- hold on the 
popniar mind with in<!reasini:f fascinalion. It conld not be 
eradicated, and it was reconcile(l to llu^ conscicMu^e in the 
<loctrine of th(< (Christian atonenjcMit. TiViM'y j)oj)idar idea, 
<^vei-y s|)ecidation lloaiini;- in lh(> spiritnal sky, was thns snc- 
cessively seized, and, like a, elond lun'crsed, was transfonniul 
into an imaijje of beanly. The ehambers of the mind W(»ro 
not remo(l(>lled, hnt for each inii)ure or friij^htfnl occnpant, 
some new inmale, some pure and elovatini; a[)iritual syndml, 
was snhstirnte(l, intelUrctually analoijfous, and every fnnction 
of hnmaii natnr(r — heart, conscienct^, n^ason, imaujinalion — 
was i^iadnally enlisted in the war aujainst moral evil. 

The a.i!;eH dilfer on(> from another: the believinu^ and the 
s<'ienlilic (>ras sneceed each oIIkm" as systolic and diastole in 
th(^ proujress of hnman dev(^lo|)ment. In b(dieviniif eras, 
nations form thems(dves on h(M'oic. traditions. Leu^ends 
Hha,|)e themselves into poetry, and aspirations after bea«ity 
and ij;oodness bloom ont into art and relii^ion. Scientific 
eras brim;; us back to reality and careful knowled<^e of facts; 
but scepticism is fatal to the (Mithusiasm which |)rodnces 
saints, and poiMs, and hero(\s. Then* would have be(>n no 
*' Iliad" in an ai;"e which inipiired into the evidence for the 
real existence of Priam or Achill(>s. There are two kinds 
of truth: ther(> is the i;-en(>ral truth, the truth of the idea, 



Origen and Celsiis. 249 

which forms the truth of poetry ; there is the literal truth of 
fact, which is the truth of science and history. They corre- 
spond to opposite tendencies in human nature, and never as 
yet have been found to thrive together. 

Without inquiry, without hesitation, by force of natural 
affinity, Christianity grew and spread over the Empire, and 
as surely there went with it and flowed out of it a complete 
revolution in the relative estimate of the value of human 
things. To a Roman or a Greek the greatest of evils had 
been pain; to the Christian the greatest of evils was sin. 
The gods of Paganism were called blessed, and were said to 
be perfectly happy ; but they were happy because they were 
unrestrained and could do whatever they pleased. The God 
of Christianity was absolute perfection, and perfection meant 
perfect obedience to law. From the lowest fibre of its roots, 
the nature of a Christian — heart, intellect, imagination — 
miderwcnt a complete transformation, a transformation which, 
if real, no intelligent person could deny to be a change from 
a worse condition to a better ; and it might have been ex- 
pected that the Roman emperors would have given a warm 
welcome to the power which was effecting such an alteration, 
if on no higher ground, yet as saving trouble to the police- 
man. Why did a government, usually so tolerant, make an 
exception of the best deserving of its subjects? AVhy, as 
was certainly the fact, was enmity to Christianity a charac- 
teristic of the best emperors, not of the worst ? Why do we 
find the darkest persecution in the reign, not of a Domitian 
or a Commodus, but under the mild, just rule of a Trajan, a 
Marcus Aurelius, a Severus, or a Diocletian ? 

No more valual)le addition could be made to theological 
history than an account of the impression made by Christian- 
ity on the minds of cultivated Romans of the highest order 
of ability, while its message was still new, before long ac- 
ceptance had made its strangest features familiar, and before 
the powers whicii it eventually exerted conimnndcd attention 
and respect. Few such men, unfortunately, condescended to 



250 Origen and Cdsus. 

examine its nature with serious care. Tacitus, Pliny, Lu- 
cian, glanced at the Christians with contemptuous pity, as 
victims of one more of the unaccountable illusions to which 
mankind were subject. They were confounded at first with 
the Jews ; and the Jews, as the Romans had found to their 
cost, were troublesome fanatics whom it was equally diffi- 
cult to govern or destroy. When the political constitution 
of a nation is abolished, its lands taken from it, and its 
people scattered, the atoms are usually absorbed into other 
combinations, and the nation ceases to exist. The Romans 
made an end of Jerusalem ; they levelled the Temple with 
the ground ; so far as force could do it, they annihilated the 
Jewish nationality. They were no nearer their end than 
when they began. The bond of coherence was not political 
but religious, and the Jewish communities dispersed through- 
out the Empire burst occasionally into furious insurrections, 
and were a constant subject of anxiety and alarm. The 
Jews proper, however, were relatively few ; they made no 
proselytes, and could be controlled ; but there had come out 
from them a sect which was spreading independent of local 
associations, making converts in every part of the world. If 
not Jews, they were wonderfully like Jews ; a proselytizing 
religion was a new phenomenon; and in an empire so little 
homogeneous as the Roman, an independent organization of 
any kind was an object of suspicion when it grew large 
enough to be observed. The Christians, too, were bad citizens, 
refusing public employment and avoiding service in the 
army; and while they claimed toleration for their own creed, 
they had no toleration for others ; every god bi.it their own 
they openly called a devil, and so long as religion was main- 
tained by the State, and the Empire was administered with 
religious forms, direct insults to the gods could not readily 
be permitted. Their organization was secret, and their 
allegiance ambiguous, since they refused to take the custom- 
ary oaths; while doubtless to intelligent men, who were 
looking to the growth of accurate scientific knowledge for 



Origen and Cdsus. -^1 

the amelioration of mankind, the appearance of a new and 
vigorous superstition was provoking and disappomtmg. All 
thrs we see, yet it still leaves much unexplained. It fails 
to show us the motives which led Marcus Aurelius to per- 
secute men whom his own principles must have compelled 
him to admire. Some further insight may be gamed, how- 
ever, from the fragments of a once celebrated work called 
"A True Account," which have been preserved by Origen 
in his answer to it. The author of this work is believed 
to have been a distinguished Roman named Celsus, Marcus 
Aurelius's contemporary. The book itself is lost. Nothing 
remains of it save the passages which Origen extracted that 
he mio-ht refute them; and thus we have no complete ac- 
count "of what Celsus said. We have, like the geologist, 
to restore an extinct organization out of the fossils of an 
imperfect skeleton. But 'the attempt is worth makmg. 
The remains of this lost production exhibit most curiously 
the relations of the Christianity of the second century to the 
intellectual culture of the time, and the causes, neither few 
nor insignificant, which prevented men of high character 
and attainments from embracing or approving it. 

Of Celsus personally not much is known. He was an 
Epicurean in opinion and belief; but the habits of men 
were not governed by their philosophy, nor did the name 
bear at that time the meaning which now attaches to it. 
The Epicurean under Marcus Aurelius was the man of 
science, and of Celsus we gather generally that he was a 
clear-sighted, honest, proud, and powerful -minded man, un- 
likely to concern himself with vice and folly. His method 
of thought was scientific in the strictest modern sense. He 
disbelieved evidently that the order of nature was ever 
interrupted by supernatural interference. He had assured 
himself that every phenomenon in the moral or material 
world was the sequel of a natural cause. Epicurus had 
taught him that constant unvarying laws, or groups of laws, 
prevailed throughout the universe, that what appeared to 



252 Origen and Celsus. 

be chance was only the action of forces not yet known to 
us, and that every alleged miracle performed either by God, 
angel, devil, or art magic, was a false interpretation of some 
natural phenomenon, misinterpreted by ignorance or misrep- 
resented by imposture. He considered that human affairs 
could be best ordered by attention and obedience to the 
teaching of observed facts, and that superstition, however 
accredited by honorable objects or apparent good effects, 
could only be mischievous in the long run. Sorcerers, char- 
latans, enthusiasts, were rising thick on all sides, pretending 
a mission from the invisible world. Of such men and such 
messaofes Celsus and his friends were inexorable antao^onists. 
The efforts of their lives were directed to saving mankind 
from becoming the victims of a new cycle of folly. He 
himself had written an elaborate treatise, which has been 
lost, like his other writings, against the Eastern magicians. 
Lucian dedicated to him his exposure of Alexander of Abo- 
nitichus, the most impudent and the most successful of the 
enchanters of the second century. "This sketch," says 
Lucian, in the closing lines, " I have determined to address 
to you, my dear sir, both to give you pleasure as a person 
whom I hold in especial honor for the wisdom, truthfulness, 
gentleness, justice, composure, and uprightness, which you 
have displayed in your general conduct, and, again, which I 
think will gratify you even more, in vindication of our 
master, Epicurus, who was a saint indeed ; who was inspired 
in the highest sense ; who alone combined, and taught others 
to combine, the good with the true, and was thus the de- 
liverer and saviour of those who would consent to learn 
from him." 

In this spirit Celsus composed his aXy]Or]<i A,oyo9, his 
" True Account," against the Christians, in connection appar- 
ently, from the political character of its concluding passages, 
with the efforts of Marcus Aurelius to suppress them. The 
book was powerful and popular, and it proved a real obstacle 
to the spread of Christianity among the educated classes. 



Origen and Celsus. 253 

Eighty years ^ at least after its publication the Church found 
it necessary to reply, and Origen, the most gifted and accom- 
plished of the Christian fathers, was selected for the task. 
Origen's answer decided the controversy in the Church's 
favor ; but in the reconsideration of the theological position 
which has been forced upon the modern world, what Celsus 
had to say has become of peculiar interest to us, and I have 
endeavored to reconstruct, in outline, his principal positions. 
His arguments lie under every disadvantage ; the order is 
disarranged ; the objections are presented sometimes in his 
own words, sometimes in paraphrases and epitomes, and are 
brought forward in the attitude in which they could be most 
easily overthrown. Often we are left to discover what he 
must have said from the details of the rejoinder. His an- 
tagonist was totally without humor, and when Celsus was 
speaking in irony or condescending to prevailing weaknesses, 
Origen supposed him to be giving his serious opinion ; and 
again, a mind intensely earnest and religious is unfitted by 
its very nature to comprehend scientific modes of thought. 
Yet Origen was too high a man to condescend to wilful mis- 
representation, or to do less than his very best to exhibit 
faithfully the lines which he assailed. Notwithstanding 
these inevitable drawbacks, a fair conception can still be 
formed of the once celebrated " True Account." 

The writer of it commences, or seems to commence, by 
saying that he does not condemn the Christians for the 
secrecy of their rites or for their barbarous origin. Secrecy 
was forced on them by their position, and a foreign extrac- 
tion was not in itself a crime. There was nothing censur- 
able in their lives or habits, or in their refusal to worship 
statues made by human artists, or to believe the legends of 
the Grecian gods. Their fault was that they had erected 
a new superstition of their own, which they maintained by 

1 That is, if the opinion generally received is correct, that the Celsus 
who composed the dyrfdrfs Xoyos was Lucian's friend. But the evidence is 
not entirelv conclusive. 



254 Origen and Celsus. 

the arts of common charlatans. A belief, Celsus admitted, 
was not to be abandoned because the profession of it was 
dangerous. A man with a soul in him longed necessarily 
for truth, loved God above all things, and desired only to 
know what God was and what God willed. But he must 
take his intellect along with him, or he might fall into folly 
and extravagance ; and Celsus complained that the Chris- 
tians would neither reason nor listen to reason. " Inquire 
nothing," they said. " Believe, and your faith will save 
you. The world's wisdom is evil, and the world's foolish- 
ness is insight." 

Their origin, according to Celsus, was tolerably well 
known. There were certain traditions common to all 
nations respecting the creation of the world. These tra- 
ditions Moses became acquainted with in Egypt. Moses, 
who was probably a magician, introduced into them varia- 
tions of his own. From Egypt he borrowed various reli- 
gious rites. A number of shepherds took him for their 
leader, and, under his guidance, they professed a belief in 
one God, whom they called " the Most High," or Adonai, or 
God of Sabaoth, or of Heaven. By these names they meant 
the Universe, or what the Greeks called rw IttI Tracrt ©ew, 
the God over all. Hence came the Jewish nation, and from 
among them, now in these late years, there had risen a second 
prophet, who was called " the son of God." 

The majority of the Jews themselves had not admitted the 
pretensions of the new claimant, and to explain the reason of 
their refusal Celsus introduces an orthodox Jew, whom he 
represents as thus addressing Christ : — 

" You were born in a small Jewish village. Your mother 
was a poor woman who earned her bread by spinning. Her 
husband divorced her for adultery. You were born in secret 
and were afterwards carried to Egypt, and were bred up 
among the Egyptian conjurers. The arts which you there 
learnt, you practised when you returned to your own people, 
and you thus persuaded them that you were God. It was 



Origcn and Cclsus. 255 

given out that you were born of a virgin. Your real father 
was a soldier, named Panther.^ The story of your Divine 
parentage is like the story of Danac. You say that when you 
were baptized in Jordan a dove descended upon you, and 
that a voice was heard from heaven declaring that you were 
the Son of God. Who saw the dove? Who heard the 
voice, except you and another who suffered as you suffered ? 
The prophets have foretold that a Son of God is to come. 
Granted. But how are we to know that they referred to you ? 
They spoke of a glorious king who was to reign over the 
world. You we know only as wandering about with publicans 
and boatmen of abandoned character."^ You tell us that the 
wise men o£ the East came at your birth to adore you ; ^ 
that they gave notice to Herod, and that Herod killed all 
the children in Bethlehem, to prevent you from becoming 
king. You yourself escaped by going to Egypt. Is this 
story true ? and if it be, could not the angels who had been 
busy about your birth have protected you at home ? When 
you grew up, what did you accomplish remarkable ? What 
did you say ? We challenged you in the Temple to give us 
a sign as your credential. You had none to give. You cured 
diseases, it is said ; you restored dead bodies to life ; you fed 
multitudes with a few loaves. These are the common tricks 
of the Egyptian wizards, which you may see performed every 
day in our markets for a few halfpence. They, too, drive 
out devils, heal sicknesses, call up the souls of the dead, pro- 
vide suppers and tables covered with dishes, and make things 
seem what they are not. We do not call these wizards sons 
of God ; we call them rogues and vagabonds." 

1 Epiphanius Pays that Joseph's father was called Panther. John of 
Damascus says that Panther was Mary's grandfather. The Talmud says 
that he was Mary's husband. 

2 Origen thinks that Celsus must have gathered this from an Epistle of 
Barnabas, where the Apostles are spoken of as uvrep irdaav a/xapTiav 
avoixcoTepoi. 

8 Origcn says the wise men were magicians. Tlicir power depended on 
some spirit or spirits. It ceased suddenly when Christ was born, and they 
thus knew that something wonderful had happened. 



256 Origen and Celsus. 

The Jew then turns to his converted countrymen. 

"What madness can have possessed you," he says, " to 
leave the law of your fathers ? Can you conceive that we, 
who were looking fpr the coming of the Messiah, should 
not have recognized him had this been he? His own 
followers even were not convinced, or they would not have 
betrayed and deserted him. If he could not persuade those 
who daily saw and spoke with him, shall he convince you 
now that he is gone ? Pie suffered, you pretend, to destroy 
the power of evil. Have there been no other sufferers ? Was 
he the only one? He worked miracles, you say, he healed 
the lame and the blind, he brought the dead to life. But, 
O light and truth, did he not himself tell you, is it not 
written in your own books, that miracles could be worked 
by impostors ? He calls Satan a master of such arts, so 
that he admits himself that they are no evidence of divine 
action. Are you to argue from the same works that one 
man is God, and another a servant of Satan ? Why is one 
a servant of Satan more than the other? To what can you 
appeal ? You say he prophesied that he would himself rise 
from the dead, and he did rise. The same is said of many 
besides him. Zamolxis told the Scythians that he had 
come back from the dead. So Pythagoras told the Italians. 
Rhampsiuitus pretended to have played dice with Ceres in 
Hell, and he showed a golden handkerchief which Ceres had 
given to him. Orpheus, Protesilaus, Hercules, Theseus, all 
are said to have died and risen again. But did any one ever 
really rise? — really? — in the body in which he had lived? 
Or shall we say that all these stories are fables, but that 
yours is true ? Who saw your prophet after he rose ? An 
hysterical woman or some of his own comj)anions who 
dreamt of him or were deluded by their enthusiasm. All 
the world were witnesses of his death. Why were none 
but his friends witnesses of his resurrection ? Had he de- 
sired to prove that he was God, he should have appeared 
to his accusers and his judge, or he should have vaniehed 



Origcn and Celsus. 257 

from the cross. We hope that we shall rise again in our 
bodies and have eternal life, that he will be a guide and 
example in the resurrection, and that one who is to come 
will prove that with God nothing is impossible. Where is 
your prophet now ? that we may see and believe. Did he 
come among us that we might reject him? He was a 

man such a man as truth shows him to have been and 

common sense declares." 

So far the Jew ; but after all, says Celsus, now speaking 
in his own person, the controversy between Jews and Chris- 
tians is but for the proverbial "ass's shadow;" for both 
agree that the human race is to be redeemed by a Saviour 
from heaven ; the only question between them is about the 
person of this Saviour. 

The Jews were a tribe of Egyptians who revolted from 
the established religion. The Christians have revolted in 
turn from them, and the cause in both cases has been the 
same — a seditious and revolutionary temper. So long as 
the Christians were few there was tolerable agreement 
amono- them. As their numbers extended the mutinous 
spirit displayed itself. Sect has formed after sect, each 
condemning the other, till they have little left but the name 
in common. Their faith rests on nothing but their hopes 
and fears, and they have invented the most extraordinary 
terrors. God forbid that they, or I, or any man should 
cease to believe that wicked men will be punished hereafter 
and good men rewarded.^ But the Christians have taken 
this ancient doctrine, and distorted its meaning, and now 
howl it out like the Corybantes, as if no one had ever heard 
of it before. Their creed preserves its original Egyptian 
stamp — grand and impressive without, and within ridicu- 
lous. The Greeks say that the heroes became gods. The 

1 A very remarkable confession, considering who made it — so remark- 
able that it must be given in Celsus's own words : yttTyre tovtois etr] /jltit' 
ifxol fi-ffT^ &\\cj} Tivl avQpwTTdiv a7r66ecrdai rh irepl rod KoXaad-qaaQai rovs 
adiKovs Kol y^pCiv a^LcoOriaeaOai tuvs Bikuiovs d6yijLa. (Lib. iii- c 16.) 
17 



258 Origen and Celsus. 

Christians will not believe in the heroes, but insist that 
Christ was seen after death by his friends when they saw 
nothing but a shadow, and they are angry with us if we in 
turn decline to believe them. Hundreds of Greeks are to 
be found to this day who maintain that they have seen, and 
often see, Esculapius busy about sick-beds. Aristeas of 
Proconnesus disappeared mysteriously again and again, and 
started up in all quarters of the world. Abaris travelled 
on an arrow. Hermotimus of Clazomence could leave his 
body and return to it. Cleomedes was locked into a box, 
and when the box was opened he was gone. Men once 
living and now deified have their temples everywhere. 
There are the Emperor Adrian's lovers. Antinous works 
miracles daily at Antinopolis. These we are to call fables ; 
yet what we are told of Jesus we are expected to believe. 
Those only can believe it who have determined that it shall 
be regarded as true, and forbid inquiry and investigation. 
The Christian teachers have no j)ower over men of educa- 
tion, over men of knowledge and learning. They do not 
address themselves to intelligence, they call human wisdom 
folly. The qualifications for conversion are ignorance and 
childish timidity. They are like the orators who gather 
crowds about them in the market-places ; but you see no 
sensible person there ; you see only boys and slaves and the 
common materials of a city mob. Weavers or cobblers will 
make their way into private houses ; so long as the heads 
of the family are present, they say nothing; when they 
have the field to themselves, they catch hold of the children 
and women, and then produce their marvels. Fathers and 
tutors are not listened to. Fathers and tutors, they say, 
are mad or blind, unable to understand or do any good 
thing, given over to vain imaginations. The weavers and 
cobblers only are wise, they only have the secret of life, they 
only can show the way to peace and happiness. If father 
and tutor come back and find them there, the more timid 
cease their instructions. Those who are bolder advise the 



Origen ami Celsus. 259 

children to defy their parents. They whisper that till they 
are alone they can teach them no more. They slink away 
with them into the women's apartment, or bid them come 
and learn the ways of perfection in their own workshops. 

I speak bitterly about this, says Celsus, because I feel 
bitterly. When we are invited to the Mysteries, the mas- 
ters use another tone. They say, " Come to us, ye who 
are of clean hands and pure speech, ye who are unstained 
by crime, ye who have a good conscience towards God, ye 
who have done justly and lived uprightly." The Christians 
say, " Come to us, ye who are sinners, ye who are fools or 
children, ye who are miserable, and ye shall enter into the 
kingdom of heaven." The rogue, the thief, the burglar, the 
poisoner, the spoiler of temples and tombs, these are their 
proselytes. Christ, they say, was sent to save sinners ; was 
he not sent to help those who have kept themselves free 
from sin ? They pretend that God will save the unjust 
man if he repents and humbles himself. The just man, who 
has held steady from the cradle in the waj^s of virtue. He 
will not look upon. We are to confess ourselves to be sin- 
ners, and to pray and sob for pardon. The magistrate judges 
by the truth, he does not listen to tears and lamentations. 
Can God require such attitudes ? Are we to think of God 
as a being who can be softened by appeals to his pity ? Why 
are sinners to have the preference with Him ? When per- 
sons with a proclivity to evil have formed evil habits, they 
are notoriously past cure ; neither punishment nor tender- 
ness will mend them. Surely those who are doing the best 
for themselves are those who best deserve help from above. 
It is pretended that well-conducted people are led astray by 
self-conceit, and will not listen to reproof. But the Chris- 
tians do not address the well-conducted. They address the 
ignorance of the multitude ; they are like the drunkards 
who accuse the sober of being drunk, or the half-blind 
who tell those with eyes that they cannot see. They are 
leading astray miserable men after visionary hopes, and 



260 Origen and Cclsus. 

turning them from the knowledge of all that is really 
good. 

You say, Celsus goes on as if personally addressing the 
converts, that God must come down to earth to judge man- 
kind. The Jews say, that He will come. The Christians, 
that He has come already. But why should God come 
down ? To learn what mankind are doing ? He already 
knows all things. Was it to set right what was amiss ? The 
everlasting order of the universe does not need to be set 
right. No link of it is broken or can be broken. Or per- 
haps you think that He was without his due honor; that 
He desired to learn who there were that believed in Him ; 
that He would have us know Him for our salvation, that 
those who would turn to Him might repent and be saved, 
and those who rejected Him might be convicted of an evil 
heart. Do you suppose that for all these ages God had left 
man alone, and only now at last has remembered and visited 
him ? You tell us nothing of God with any savor of truth 
in it. You terrify fools by pictures of the horrors which 
await the impenitent, pictures like the spectres and phantasms 
which we are shown in the Mysteries. 

You have gathered a doctrine out of the Greek legends 
which you have not understood about cataclysms and con- 
flagrations. The Greeks discovered that elemental catas- 
trophes might be looked for in recurring cycles. The last 
deluge was Deucalion's : now you think that it is the turn 
of fire, and that God will come upon the earth as a consum- 
ing flame. God, ray friends, is all-perfect and all-blessed. 
If He leaves his present state, and comes down as a man 
among men. He must pass from blessedness to unblessedness, 
from perfection to imperfection, from good to bad, and no 
such change is possible with Him. Change is the condition 
of mortality. The immortal remains the same forever. He 
cannot change without ceasing to be Himself He cannot 
seem to change while He remains unchanged, for then He is 
a deceiver. You Jews say, that when the world is full of 



Origen and Celsus. 261 

vice and violence, God must send his angels and destroy it 
as lie did in the first Deluge. You Christians say, that the 
Son of God was sent on account of the Jews' sins ; that the 
Jews crucified Him, and incurred heavier wrath than before. 
You are like so many ants creeping out of their anthill, or 
frogs sitting round a pond, or a congregiition of worms on a 
mud-heap, discussing amoug themselves which have sinned, 
and all claiming to have had the secrets of God revealed to 
them. For us, they say. He has left the circuit of the sky. 
Our interests only He considers, forgetting all other created 
things : to us he sends messenger after messenger, and thinks 
only how to attach us to Himself: we are God's children, 
and are made in his likeness : for us earth, water, air, and 
stars were created, to be our ministers : but some of us have 
sinned, and now God must come, or send his Son, to burn 
up the offenders, and give the rest of us frogs eternal life. 
Such language would be less monstrous from the frogs than 
from those who now use it. What are the Jews that they 
claim so lofty privileges ? They were a colony of revolted 
Egyptian slaves who settled in a corner of Palestine. In 
their account of themselves they pretend that at the begin- 
ning God made a man with his hands, and breathed life 
into him. He then put him to sleep, took out one of 
his ribs, and of the rib made a woman. Having thus created 
these two. He gave them certain orders, which the serpent 
tempted them to disobey, and thus crossed God's purpose 
and got the better of Him. God having thus failed to make 
His creatures loyal to Himself, after a time proposed to de- 
stroy them. There was a Deluge, and a marvellous ark, in 
which all kinds of living things were inclosed, with a dove and 
a raven to act as messengers.^ The history of the Patriarchs 
follows — children singularly born ; brothers quarrelling ; 

1 The difficulty of conceivincr that such a multitude of creatures could 
have been preserved in a vessel of the dimensions usually assi<rned to the 
Ark, was a very old one. Ori^jen .c:ets over it by sayini? that the figures 
were wrontrly given. The Ark, he says, was 90,000 cubits long, and 2,500 
cubits wide. 



2G2 Origen and Celsus. 

mothers plotting ; a youth cheating his father-in-law ; a 
story of Lot and his daughters worse than the banquet of 
Thyestes. One of the lads goes to Egypt, where he inter- 
prets a dream, and becomes ruler of the country. His 
family join him and settle there. The Jews and Christians 
explain these legends into allegory, but it is all illusion to- 
gether. God makes nothing which is liable to death. The 
soul of man is God's work. The body of man is not his 
work. The human body differs nothing from the body of a 
bat or a worm. It is made of the same materials. It comes 
to the same end ; all material things are mortal, and subject 
to decay. The evil which men speak of is a necessary con- 
dition of the universe. It is not in God ; it is in matter ; its 
energy lies in corruption ; and life and death succeed each other 
with an unchanging law of uniform succession. The world 
was not made for man. Each organized creature is born and 
perishes for the sake of the whole /cocr/xos. That which to 
you seems evil may not be evil in itself To some other 
being, or to the universe, it may possibly be good. Man 
refers all things to himself and his own interests ; but the 
rain from heaven was no more sent for him than it was sent 
for the trees and herbs. The trees and herbs are of as much 
benefit to the animals as to man. The animals might even 
with better reason regard themselves as the special objects of 
God's care. Man seeks his food with pain and toil. The 
animals neither sow nor plough; the earth supplies them 
freely with all that they need. Euripides may say, — 

The day and night are ministers of man. 

Why more of man than of ants and gnats, to whom night 
brings sleep, and day the return of energy ? Are we lords 
of the animals because we capture and devour them ? Do 
not they equally chase and devour us ? And we must use 
nets and weapons and hounds and huntsmen, while nature 
has given weapons to them sufficient with no such assist- 
ance. So far as nature goes it might be rather said that 



Origen and Celsus. 263 

God had subjected man to beasts. Will a higher place be 
claimed for man because he lives in cities and rules himself 
by laws? So do ants and bees. They too have their chiefs, 
their wars, their victories, their captured enemies : they have 
their towns and suburbs, their division of labor, their punish- 
ment for drones : they have cemeteries for their dead ; they 
converse and reason when they meet on the road. To one 
looking down from heaven no such mighty difference would 
appear between the doings of men and the doings of ants. 
The universe was no more made for man than for the lion, 
the eagle, or the dolphin. One created being is not better 
in itself than another. All are but parts of one great and 
perfect whole, and this whole is the constant care of the 
providence of God. He does not forget it and turn to it 
at intervals when it has become corrupt. He is not angry 
with it nor threatens to destroy it on man's account any 
more than on account of apes and flies. Each thing in its 
place fulfils its allotted work. 

No God or Son of God has ever come down to this earth 
or will come. The Jews profess to venerate the heavens 
and the inhabitants of the heavens ; but the grandest, the 
most sublime, of the wonders of those high regions they will 
not venerate. They adore the phantasms of the dark, the 
obscure visions of their sleep ; but for those bright and sliin- 
ing harbingers of good, those ministers by whom the winter 
rains and the summer warmth, the clouds and the liijhtninjjs 
and the thunders, the fruits of the earth and all living things 
are generated and preserved, those beings in whom God re- 
veals his presence to us, those fair celestial heralds, those 
angels which are angels indeed, for them they care not, they 
heed them not. They dream of a God who will burn all 
created things to cinders, and will raise up them to life again 
in their fleshly bodies. It is not to gratify such appetites 
of disordered minds that God presides in this universe. He 
rules in justice and uprightness. To the soul He may grant 
immortality. The flesh is but a perishing excrement which 



264 Origcn and C chits. 

He neither will save nor, though you say that with Him 
nothing is impossible, is able to save, for He is Himself 
the reason of all things, and He cannot contradict his own 
nature. 

The Jews as a separate nation have their own institutions 
and their own religion, and the Government does not inter- 
fere with them. Different peoples have each their special 
modes of thought and action, and it is good to preserve a 
community in the form in which it has grown. It may be 
too that the earth from the beginning has been partitioned 
into spiritual prefectures, each under a viceroy of its own, 
and that each province prospers best when left to its own 
ruler. National laws and customs are of infinite variety, 
and each nation prefers its own. If in this spirit the Jews 
are tenacious of their traditions, they are not to be blamed ; 
but if they pretend to the possession of special secrets of 
knowledge, and refuse, as unclean, a communion with the 
rest of mankind, they must be taught that their own dogmas 
are not peculiar to them. They worship the God of heaven ; 
the Persians sacrifice on the hill-tops to Dis, by whom they 
mean the circle of the sky ; and it matters little whether we 
name this Being Dis or " the Most High," or " Zeus," or 
" Adonai," or " Sabaoth," or " Ammon," or with the Scythi- 
ans " Papa." The Egyptians and the Colchi were circum- 
cised before the Jews ; the Egyptians do not eat swine's 
flesh, nor the flesh of many animals beside ; the Pythago- 
reans toucli none. As to outward signs that God has any 
special care for the Jews, what has become of them ? Not 
knowing the truth and enchanted by vain ilhisions, they have 
been swept away out of their country and bear the penalty 
of their arrogance. 

Allow that the Christians' master may have been some 
angel : was he the first or the only angel that has come into 
the world? The Christians themselves tell of many more 
who, they say, rebelled and ai'e confined in chains in the 
hollow of the earth, and they pretend that the hot springs 



Origen and Celsics. 265 

are their tears. . Some of them imagine that the Demim-ous, 
or Creator, was uot the Father of Christ, and that Christ 
came to bring men from the Demiurgus to his Father. 
There are the Simonians among them who worship Helen 
or her master Helenus. Others derive themselves from 
Marcel lina, others from Salome, others from Mariamne, or 
from Martha. And there are, again, the Marcionites. Some 
of these sects prostrate themselves in darkness before im- 
agined demons with rites more abominable than the orgies 
in the College of Antinous ; they curse each other with hor- 
rid imprecations, and will yield no point for concord ; yet, 
amidst their mutual reproaches, they all sing to the one 
note, " The world is crucified to me, and I to the world ; " 
" If you will be saved, believe, or else depart from us." 
Who is to decide among them ? Are those who would be 
saved to throw dice to learn to whom to attach themselves ? 
Again, there are the Ophiatos, or serpent worshippers — a 
tree of knowledge, with the serpent for the good spirit, and 
with Demiurgus for the evil spirit. There are the prophetic 
oracles, circles within circles, water flowing from the Church 
on earth, virtues distilled from the Prunic Virgin,^ the soul 
living, the sky slain that it might live again, the earth 
stabbed with an altar knife, human beings sacrificed and re- 
stored, death ceasing out of the universe when sin shall die, 
the narrow road, the gates flying open of their own accord, 
everywhere the tree of life, and the resurrection of the 
flesh from off the tree — I suppose because their master 
was crucified, and was himself a worker in wood. Had he 
been thrown from a cliff, or into a pit, or been hanged ; had 
he been a shoemaker, or a mason, or a smith, we sliould 
have had the rock of life, the gulf of resurrection, the rope 
of immortality, or the holy leather, or the blessed stone, or 
the steel of charity. What nurse would not be ashamed to 
tell such fables to a child ? 

Then there are those who practise incantation and exor- 

1 The celestial mother of the Valentinians. 



266 Origen and Celsus. 

cism with diagrams and mystic numbers. I have seen books 
with the names of spirits and formulas for spells in the hands 
of some of their priests. An Egyptian once told me that 
magic had power on fools and sensualists, but could touch 
no one who was sound in mind and body. The Christians 
dream of some antagonist to God — a devil, whom they call 
Satanus, who thwarted God when He wished to benefit 
mankind. The Son of God suffered death from Satanus, 
but they tell us that we are to defy him, and to bear the 
worst that he can do ; Satanus will come again and work 
miracles, and pretend to be God, but we are not to believe 
him. The Greeks tell of a war among the gods ; army 
against army, one led by Saturn and one by Ophiucus ; of 
challenges and battles ; the vanquished falling into the ocean, 
the victors reigning in heaven. In the Mysteries we have 
the rebellion of the Titans, and the fables of Typhon, and 
Horus, and Osiris. The story of the devil plotting agaiust 
man is stranger than either of these. The Son of God is 
injured by the devil, and charges us when we are afflicted 
to bear it patiently. Why not punish the devil, instead of 
threatening poor wretches whom he deceives ? 

Christ must needs suffer, you say, because it was so fore- 
told. The oracles under whose guidance so many colonies 
have been founded were nothing, but every word spoken or 
not spoken in Judiea must be infallible. Prophets and di- 
viners are to be found at the present day scattered every- 
where. They are to be met with in temples, and camps, 
and cities, with crowds gathered about them. " I am God," 
they say, " or the Son of God, or the Holy Spirit, and I have 
come because the world is to perish, and you, O men, are 
like to perish, too, in your iniquities ; but I will save you ; 
hereafter you will see me coming in the power of heaven ; 
blessed are those who believe in me now ; the rest I will 
burn with everlasting fire ; repentance will then be in vain ; 
only those who now listen shall escape." Then they utter 
some unintelligible nonsense from which any rogue or block- 



Origen and C chits. 267 

head can extract whatever meaning pleases him. I have 
myself spoken with some of these persons, who, when cross- 
questioned, have confessed that they were impostors. If 
prophets like these were to foretell that God was to fall 
sick and die, must God fall sick and die because they say 
so? What is incredible and unworthy may not be be- 
lieved, though all mankind go mad and prophesy it. The 
Jewish prophets, inspired by God, you say, foretold that 
Christ would come to do tliis and that, and the prophets 
could not err. God through Moses promised the Israelites 
temporal prosperity and earthly dominion ; He bade them 
destroy their enemies, sparing neither old nor young, and 
threatened them with destruction themselves unless they 
obeyed Him. The Son of God condemned riches, con- 
demned ambition ; men were to care no more for food or 
raiment than the ravens or the lilies ; they were to offer the 
cheek to be smitten. It seems that either Moses was wrong 
or Christ was wrong ; or are we to suppose that God 
changed his own mind ? 

You dream, perhaps, of another and better world, another 
existence, as in some Elysian fields, where all riddles will 
be solved and all evil be put away. You say unless God 
can be seen in the form of a man, how are we to know 
Him? How can anything be known, except by the senses? 
You might see Him, if that was all, in the Greek temples. 
But your words are the words of flesh, not of reasonable 
men. Then only can you see God when you close the eyes 
of the body and open the eyes of the intellect, and if you 
need a guide upon the road, avoid the quacks and conjurers 
who promise to show you ghosts. Put away your vain 
illusions, your marvellous formulas, your lion and your 
Amphibius, your God-ass and your celestial door-keepers/ 
in whose names, poor wretches, you allow yourselves to be 
persecuted and impaled. Plato says that the Architect and 
Father of the Universe is not easily found, and when found 

1 An allusion to some of the Gnostic heresies. 



268 Origen and Odsus. 

cannot be made known to common minds. Go learn of 
Plato how truth is sought for by those who are inspired 
indeed. Hard and narrow is the way that leads to light, 
and few can find it ; but through the efforts of the wise 
we are not left wholly without some glimpse, without some 
conception, of that awful and eternal being. Lost in the 
flesh as you are and without pure vision, I know not if you 
can follow me. That which is intelligible is perceived by 
the mind. That which is visible is perceived by the eye. 
The spirit apprehends the things of the spirit, the eye ap- 
prehends the things of the eye ; and as the sun in this 
visible Universe is not the eye and is not sight, but is the 
power which enables the eye to see and enables all sensible 
things which are the object of vision to be seen, so God is 
not intellect, and is not spirit, and is not knowledge, but 
through Him the spirit perceives, the intellect knows ; in 
Him all truth and all objects of knowledge have their being; 
and He Himself, by some ineffable agency, is seen above 
them all. I speak as to men of understanding. It will be 
well if you can follow me. The spirit you speak of, which 
you pretend has come down to you from God to teach his 
mysteries, is the same spirit which has made these truths 
known to us. If you cannot comprehend, I bid you be 
silent. Cover up your ignorance. Call not those blind 
whose eyes are open, nor those lame who run ; and live as 
you will in your body, which is the dead part of you. If 
you must needs have some new doctrine, adopt some illus- 
trious name, better suited to the dignity of a divine nature. 
If Hercules and Esculapius do not please you, there was 
Orpheus. He too died by violence. If Orpheus has been 
taken by others, there was Anaxarchus, who was beaten to 
death and mocked at his executioners. " Pound on," he 
said, " you can pound the sheath of Anaxarchus, himself 
you cannot pound." The men of science, you may tell me, 
have appropriated Anaxarchus. Well, then, take Epictetus, 
who, wlien iiis master was wrenching his leg upon the rack. 



Origcn and Cclsus. 2C9 

smiled, and said he would break it, and, when he did break 
it, said, " I told you so." Even the sibyl, whose poems you 
interpolate with your own fables, you might have called a 
dausrhter of God with a sort of reason. Your own le^jen- 
dary heroes would have been more presentable than the one 
whom you have chosen : your Jonah who was in the whale's 
belly, or your Daniel in the lions' den. 

You boast that you have no temples, no altars, no images. 
The absence of such things is not peculiar to you. The 
nomad Scythians and the Africans have none. The Per- 
sians have none. The Persians say the gods are not like 
men, and they will not represent them as men. Heraclitus 
says that prayer to an image is like prayer to a house wall. 
But you, in condemning images, are inconsistent with your- 
selves, for you say that man was made in the image of God. 
The images in the temples you pretend are images of genii. 
If this be so, and if there be genii, why should not they be 
adored ? Is not everything directed by God ?• Is not God's 
providence over all ? Angels, genii, heroes, have they not 
each their own law prescribed by God ? are they not minis- 
tering spirits set over their several provinces according to 
their degree ? and why, if we adore God, should we not 
adore those who bear rule under Him ? 

No man, you say, can serve many masters. This is the 
language of sedition — of men who would divide themselves 
from the society of their fellows, and would carry God along 
with them. A slave cannot serve a second master without 
wronging the first to whom he belongs. But God can 
suffer no wrong. God can lose nothing. The inferior 
spirits are not his rivals, that He can resent the respect 
which we pay to them. In them we worship only some 
attribute of Him from whom they hold authority, and in 
saying that one only is Lord you disobey and rebel against 
Him. Nor do you practise your own profession. You 
have a second Lord yourselves, a man who lived and died 
a few years ago ; you pretend still that in God's Son you 



270 Origen and Celsus. 

still worship but one God ; but this is a subtle contrivance 
that you may give the greater glory to this Son. You say 
that in your " Dialogus Coelestis," " If the Son of Man is 
stronger than God and Lord of God, who else can be Lord 
of Him who is above God ? " ^ You have a God above the 
heavens — Father of the son of man, whom you have chosen 
to worship ; and to this son of man you give the glory of 
God by pretending that he is stronger than God. You have 
no outward services, because you prefer to be connected by 
a secret bond among yourselves. The true God is the 
common Father of us all. From us He needs nothing. He 
is good, and in Him is no jealousy or malice. What hurt 
can His most devoted servants fear from taking part in the 
public festivals? If the images presented there be idols, 
they are without power to injure. If they are spirits, they 
are spirits sent from God, and deserve the honor and ser- 
vice assigned to them by the laws. Y^'our customs require 
you to abstain from the flesh of some of the animals which 
are offered in sacrifice. Be it so. Abstain if you will from 
the flesh of all animals. Pythagoras did the same. But if, 
as you pretend, you will not be partakers with genii, are 
the genii only present when the victims are slain ? The 
corn and herbs which you eat, the wine you drink, the 
water, and the very air you breathe, are they not all created 
by the spirits that are set over them? Either you must not 
live in this world at all, or you must offer your thanksgiv- 
ings and prayers to the beings from whom you receive all 
that you have. These supermundane and ethereal officials 
may be dangerous if they are neglected or insulted. You 
are onlj'^ in danger from them, you say, if you call them by 
their barbarous names. You are safe if you keep to Latin 
and Greek equivalents. You may curse a Zeus or Apollo 
and strike him in the face, and he takes no notice. Alas, 
my good people, we, too, can outlaw your spirit by sea and 

1 The Dialogus Coelestis was perhaps a Marcionite book. Origen knew 
nothing of it, and declined to be responsible for it. 



Origen and Celsus. 271 

land ; we can take you who are his images and chain you 
and kill you. And your Son of God, or whatever you 
please to call him, is no less indifferent. We do not learn 
that those who put him to death suffered anything extraor- 
dinary. What has befallen since his end to persuade us 
that your son of man was Son of God ? He was sent into 
the world as God's ambassador. He was killed, his mes- 
sage perished with him ; and, after all these generations, he 
still sleeps. He suffered, you say, with his own consent. 
May not those whom you revile suffer also with their con- 
sent ? It is well to compare like with like. Is there no 
evidence for the presence of God's Spirit in the established 
religion ? Need I speak of the oracles ? the prophecies 
announced from the shrines ? the revelations in the augu- 
ries ? the visions of divine beings actually seen ? All the 
world is full of these things. How many cities have been 
founded at the bidding of an oracle ? How many rescued 
from plague and famine ? How many have perished misera- 
bly when the oracle's commands were neglected? Princes 
have flourished or fallen. Childless parents have obtained 
their wishes. The sick and maimed have recovered liealth 
and strength. Blasphemers have gone mad confessing their 
crimes. Others have killed themselves, or fallen into moi'tal 
illness ; some have been slain on the spot by an awful sen- 
tence out of the shrine. 

You tell of the eternal torments which await the wicked. 
You say no more than the interpreters of the Mysteries. 
But the penalties which you pronounce against them, the 
chiefs of the Mysteries pronounce against you. Why should 
you be more right than they ? They and you are equally 
confident in your message ; and they as well as you have 
their miracles and prophecies. For your message in itself 
(I do not speak to such of you as are troubled about a bodily 
resurrection ; with them it is vain to reason), to those among 
you who believe that the soul or intellect is immortal (intel- 
lectual spirit, holy or blessed spirit, living spirit, effluence 



272 Origen and Celsus. 

from incorporeal nature celestial and imperishable, name it 
as you please), to those who believe that the wicked will 
suffer everlastingly, and that the righteous will enjoy eternal 
happiness in the presence of God^ I say that they believe 
truly and well. Let them hold to this doctrine. May it never 
be abandoned either by them or any man ! Perhaps for all 
human beings some penal purgatory is necessary to purify 
the soul from the passions and pollutions by which it has 
been stained in its connection with the body. Mortals, Em- 
pedocles tells us, must wander apart from bliss in countless 
forms for 30,000 years, and are committed to the keepers 
of the prison-house. One, however, of two things : either 
you must recognize the usages of the commonwealth and 
respect its ministers, or the commonwealth cannot bear your 
presence. You must go from us and leave no seed be- 
hind you, that the trace of you may be blotted off the earth. 
If you choose to marry and rear children, and eat the fruit 
of the ground and share in the common interests of life, you 
must submit to the conditions, although they may not be 
wholly to your taste. All of us have to bear with things 
which we could wish otherwise. It is a law of nature, and 
there is no remedy. You must pay honor to those who are 
set over you. You must discharge the duties of this life 
until you are released from the bonds of it. You cannot 
have the benefits of society and refuse to share its obliga- 
tions. In some places the religious customs may be extrava- 
gant and superstitious, and wise men use their judgment 
as to the credit which they attach to them. But if the 
Romans were to listen to you, to abolish all their laws and 
customs, and to worship only your Most High, or what you 
may please to call Him, you will not pretend that He will 
come and fight for them and defend them from their ene- 
mies. According to you. He promised the Jews more than 
this, yet he has done little either for them or for yourselves. 
The Jews were to have ruled the world, and they have not 
a yard of ground to call their own. You are only safe when 



Origen and Cclsus. 273 

you keep concealed. If you are found you are executed. 
God must never be forgotten either by day or night, either 
in public or private, either in speech or action. Whatever 
we do or leave undone, we should have God ever before our 
minds, but we must obey also the princes and rulers of this 
world, the powers, whatever they be, which have authority 
here. I do not say that obedience is without limit. If a 
servant of God be commanded to do some wrong act or 
speak an irreverent word, he is bound to disobey. lie must 
bear all torture and all death sooner than say or do what 
God forbids : but if the order be to salute the Sun or sing 
a hymn to Athene, he does but glorify God the more when 
he praises God's ministers ; nor is it unlawful to swear 
by the emperor, for to the emperor the world is given in 
charge, and under him you hold all that you have. 

A monarch is enthroned upon earth to whom God has 
committed the sceptre. Refuse to acknowledge him, refuse 
to serve under him in the state or the army, and he has 
no choice but to punish you, because if all were to act as 
you do he would be left alone and unsupported ; the empire 
would be overrun by the barbarians, and all sound knowledge 
would be destroyed, your own superstition along with it. 
You have no fear, you say ; you can face the prospect ; you 
are content to see ruler after ruler perish if only he will lis- 
ten to you. If the rulers have any prudence they will first 
make an end with you. Your notion that all the world can 
be brought to one mind in religion, Asiatic, European, 
African, Greek, and Barbarian, is the wildest of dreams. 
It cannot be. The very thought reveals your ignorance. 
Your duty is to stand by your sovereign, in the field, in the 
council chamber, wherever he requires your service. Do 
justly in your place as citizens, and make yourselves worthy 
members of the commonwealth.^ 

1 Origen says on this very important point that Christians will only 
assist tlie Emperor with their own weapons. They will put on the armor 
of God. They will pray for the suecess of the Imperial armies when the 
18 



274 Oriyen and Celsus. 

Such is the general bearing of this memorable treatise. 
There must be large gaps in many parts where the connec- 
tion is broken. The conclusion is abrupt. It was, perhaps, 
a further development of the political aspect of the question, 
which Origen thought it unnecessary to quote. In places 
he seems to have misunderstood Celsus, in places to have 
unconsciously done him injustice. Throughout we do not 
know where we have the words of Celsus himself, and 
where a paraphase of what Origen thought him to mean. 
Occasionally where a paragraph appears to be quoted ver- 
bally, it is unintelligible from want of context, and we are 
driven to Origen's rejoinders to discover what Celsus is talk- 
ing about. On the whole, however, the sketch which I have 
given does, I believe, represent faithfully in a generalized 
form the argument which obstructed for a century the prog- 
ress of Christianity. The reply, which was long an arsenal 
for Christian advocates, is as beautiful as it is voluminous. 
It is the unfolding of the position of the Christian Church 
towards the surrounding world in all its simplicity, its inno- 
cence, and spiritual purity. Good men are not protected 
from intellectual errors. Their thoughts are occupied with 
higher subjects, and they attend, perhaps, less than others to 
merely secular learning. When he is off his own ground 
and attempts to answer Celsus on questions of fact, on science, 



cause is a just one. The priests of the temples were excused from shedding 
blood, and confined themselves to intercession. Christians abstained on 
the same ground to keep their hands pure. They were willing to pray for 
the confusion of the enemies of justice, and by defeating the evil spirits 
who had caused a war they would benefit the Emperor more than they could 
do by fighting with their hands. Serve under him as legionaries they would 
not, however he might try to force them. 

The Fathers were divided on the matter. Tertullian wavers, but inclines 
to agree with Origen. Many Christians did as a fact serve in the Imperial 
army. The complaint of Celsus, and Origen's defiant language eighty 
years after, show, however, that their rule was to abstain; and we need no 
further explanation of the "persecutions." Liability to military service 
is a universal condition of citizenship, and no nation modern or ancient 
would tolerate a refusal on the plea of conscience. 



Origen and Cclsus. 275 

on history, on statesmanship, Origen is a child contending 
with a giant. In the " True Account " we find tlie tone 
and almost the language of the calm, impartial, thoughtful 
modern European. We find the precise attitude in which a 
sensible man in our own time would place himself towards 
any new revelation which might present itself now, pre- 
tending to be supported by miracles and interfering with 
political obligations. Celsus was in advance of his age. 
He was on an elevation from which he could survey the 
past and current superstitions, and detect the origin of most 
of them in ignorance or credulity. Origen replies to him 
from the level of contemporary illusions, from which he 
was as little free as the least instructed of his catechu- 
mens. Celsus tells him that " names " are not things, that 
names are but signs, and that different words in different 
lano-ua^es mean the same object : that when religious 
Greeks speak of Zeus, and Latins of Jupiter, and Persians 
of Dis, and Jews of Jehovah, they all mean the common 
Father of mankind. Origen answers that this cannot be, 
because if the formula of the God of Abraham, the God of 
Isaac, and the God of Jacob, was properly pronounced, mir- 
acles were every day notoriously worked by it, while the 
names of the other gods had no power at all. So through- 
out his whole argument he assumed that the earth was full 
of demons ; that the heathen gods were demons ; that the 
oracles were inspired by demons ; that madness and disease 
were possession by demons. The con j urers, whom Celsus and 
Lucian knew to be charlatans and impostors, were to Origen 
enchanters who had made a compact with Satan or had 
gained a power over him by magical arts. Christianity was 
encountering the mystery of evil on its own supernatural 
platform, and putting .to flight with supernatural weapons 
the legions of hell. Celsus had studied natural history 
accurately and intelligently. Origen was on the same 
ground as his contemporaries, and availed himself of popu- 
lar errors to gain credibility for the Christian miracles. 



276 Origen and Celsus. 

Thus he meets the objection to the virgin birth of Christ by 
alluding to parthenogenesis among animals, and by assert- 
ing that the vultures were an acknowledged instance of 
it. Celsus understood the generation of human legends, 
and knew their worth or worthlessness. Origen took what 
he found. He parallels the angel's visit to Joseph with the 
vision wliich forbade Aristou, Plato's father, to approach his 
wife till the first child was born. He thought the stoi'y 
worth producing, though he did not pledge himself to a be- 
lief that it was true. He did not see that the readiness of 
mankind to invent and receive such stories tended rather to 
suggest in all instances an analogous origin for them in 
human enthusiasm. To Origen the resurrection was not un- 
exampled, because Plato says that " Heras, the son of Armi- 
nius, had returned to life after being twelve days dead," and 
" many others were known to have risen out of their graves 
after they had been buried." And when Celsus asks why 
Christ was seen only by his disciples after his resurrection, 
Origen answers that after He had spoiled principalities and 
powers, his body had peculiar properties and was only 
visible to those who were in a proper spiritual condition. 

Most persons would now admit that Celsus spoke with wise 
diffidence when he hesitated at the assumption that the uni- 
verse and all that it contained was created solely for the sake 
of man. Origen is perfectly certain that God had no other 
object. Sun, moon, and stars, and earth and everything 
living upon it, were subordinated to man. In man alone, or 
in reference to man, the creation had its purpose and mean- 
ing. As to Adam and the story of Paradise, it was an alle- 
gory. Adam was Adam, and he was also human nature. 
Allegory was always a resource when other arguments were 
wanting. The wholesale slaughter ©f the people of Canaan 
enjoined upon the Israelites seemed to Celsus inconsistent 
with the injunction to turn the cheek to the smiter. Origen 
boldly answers that by the Canaanites were meant the 
Israelites' own evil dispositions ; the children of Babylon 



Origcn and Cdsus. 277 

who were to be dashed against the stones, were their own 
wicked thoughts and inclinations, which they were ordered 
to tear out and fling from them. A yet bolder flight of his 
imagination was his escape from difficulties with the Ark. 
The dimensions, he said, were wrongly given. The Ark, 
which was a hundred years in building, was as large as an 
enormous city. 

But these illustrations give no true conception of Origen's 
argument, and on the moral and spiritual side Origen was as 
• completely victorious as Celsus was irresistible on the intel- 
lectual. Celsus insisted that Christianity was identical in 
character with a thousand other superstitions. Origen was 
able to insist on the extraordinary difference, that neither 
the philosophy of the schools, nor the mysteries, the festi- 
vals, the rituals of the heathen gods availed to check the 
impurity of society, or to alleviate the miseries of mankind, 
and that vice and wretchedness disappeared in every house 
into which the Gospel found an entrance. This was true ; 
and it was a truth which outweighed a million-fold the skil- 
fullest cavils of the intellect. A new life had come into the 
world ; it was growing like the grain of mustard-seed by its 
own vital force, and the earth was growing green under its 
shadow. Such an argument was unanswerable. No other 
creed could be pointed to from which any stream was flow- 
ino^ of moral regeneration. Celsus taunted the Christians with 
addressing: their message to the i"rnorant and the miserable. 
" You cannot change the nature of fallen men," he said. 
" Help those who are helping themselves, and leave fools 
and sinners to gather as they sow." Nature, it is true, is 
inexorable. Nature never pardons, and punishes mistake 
as harshly as she punishes crime. The law of nature is 
" woe to the weak," and human society follows nature's foot- 
steps. Governed by a stern but wholesome instinct, society 
insists that each individual sliall learn his duty for himself, 
and shall be made to feel by sharp penalties the consequences 
of his own transgressions. It is so, and it will be so. There 



278 Origen and Celsus. 

is no danger that the world will ever become too merciful. 
But against this hard enactment there jDleads in mitigation 
the still soft voice of humanity, which in Christianity for 
the first time became an effective power. The strong and 
successful are not always the good ; the miserable are not 
always the wicked ; and even for the wicked, pity claims to 
be heard in mitigation of punishment. They did not make 
the dispositions which they brought with them when they 
were born. They did not wholly make the circumstances in 
which those dispositions were fostered into habits. Com- 
passion for the weak, the divinest attribute of God, now at 
length began to control and limit the cruelty of nature ; 
conscience, accepting another law for itself, has been com- 
pelled by Christianity to submit to a higher rule of obligation. 
Christianity abolished the gladiator shows and the fights 
of men with wild beasts, which turned the spectators into 
savage beasts themselves. More slowly, but yet surely, 
Christianity has forbidden the strong to seize the helpless 
and make them slaves, or to expose children to die lest 
population should become redundant. The genius of Chris- 
tianity has covered Europe with hospitals for the sick ; has 
imposed on nations the duty of contending at their own cost 
against plagues and famine ; has created a new virtue in 
" charity," which was unknown to Aristotle ; and has as- 
signed the highest place to it among human excellences. 
Even to the poor sinner, the abandoned profligate, given 
over as irredeemable by the man of the w^orld, and left to 
perish, Christianity opened a window of hope ; for the lost 
sinner there was the possibility of return ; peace, happiness, 
redemption, recovered purity, were within his reach ; the 
tyranny of evil might still be broken if he himself would 
turn from it ; while the virtuous man, the man who with 
real success was endeavoring to live well, was not left with- 
out a message, as Celsus supposed. He was told to look 
into his own painted sepulchre of a heart, to compare him- 
self at his best with what he knew that he ought to be, and 



Origen and Cclsus. 279 

to say, if he dared, that he, too, had no need of a merciful 
judgment. The address of the "Evangel," the "good 
news " to the publican and sinner, which called out the 
scorn of the cultivated Roman, has introduced a principle 
into human life which has revolutionized it from base to 
summit. 

As it was with humanity, so it was with licentiousness. 
The " resurrection of Christ " was a formula more powerful 
than the spell of an enchanter to cast out the devils of glut- 
tony and bestiality. It was the eternal symbol of the death 
to sin and the living to righteousness. " As Christ died in 
the body and rose again," so Christians were bidden to put 
to death the lusts that were in their flesh, and rise again to 
purity. Philosophers might lecture in the schools in praise 
of temperance. Philosophy had become an intellectual play- 
thing ; it could not so much as expel the devil out of the 
philosophers themselves, who, if we can believe Lucian, 
were the most contemptible beings within the circuit of the 
Empire. Nor had Lucian himself any power of exorcism, 
or Celsus, or Marcus Aurelius : they had knowledge and 
integrity ; they had large-minded statesmanship ; they might 
lead pure lives themselves ; and they had a healthy scorn for 
the degradation of most of their contemporaries. But they 
possessed no spell to cast out the vicious self-indulgence of 
their age. They could suggest no certain fears or hopes as 
a motive for a better life. They could not reach the enthu- 
siasm of emotion, which would choose a better life for its 
own sake, independent of motive. The conscience of the 
ignorant masses in the Empire was rising in indignation 
against the depravity of the educated ; and neither able nor 
much caring to examine the historical details of their belief, 
the disciples of Cliristianity accepted it in its spiritual com- 
pleteness, and flung themselves with all their souls into the 
war with evil. 

Their teachers were, like themselves, animated by the 
same emotions, and reasoned from the same principles. 



280 Origen and Celsus. 

They did not parade the critical proofs of this or that fact 
mentioned in Scripture. They took the facts as they found 
them, and turned them to a spiritual purpose. The early 
Fathers were men often of the highest intellect ; but intel- 
lect takes various forms ; they had not studied either human 
history, or the world outside them, with the eyes of critics ; 
intellect with them had been poured into the imagination ; 
they saw, as poets see, the spiritual truth underlying the 
actual, of which the actual is no more than a shelL It was 
not for them to oppress their hearers with labored volumes 
of evidence. " Believe," they said ; " faith alone will save 
you ; " and Origen justly defended the bold position. Ante- 
cedent belief is the only basis possible for action of any 
kind. If we wait till we have considered all possibilities, 
before and behind, till we have reflected on the fallibility 
of our faculties, and allowed for the effect of emotion or 
enthusiasm in biassing our judgment, life will be gone before 
we have begun to live. "Believe," in substance said Origen 
himself, " that sin is death, that to forsake sin is the resur- 
rection to life. For the rest, the world is full of evil spirits, 
trying everywhere to mislead or injure you ; but if there 
are devils there are angels ; if there are enchanters there 
are Christ and the saints." Christianity took up freely into 
itself the popular theories, the popular modes of thought, 
and assimilated them to its own likeness, as the growing 
oak takes in carbon through its leaves and converts it into 
fibre. It was not a new knowledge imparted authoritatively 
by men of science. It was the organic development of a 
new conviction which was taking hold of the hearts of 
mankind. 

Have we, then, no security that the facts of Scripture 
history are literally and precisely true ? The question is 
less important than it seems. The story of Newton and 
the apple may be a legend. Yet none the less Newton 
discovered and revealed the true law of gravitation. A 
true religion, it cannot be too often repeated, is not a 



Origen and Celsics. 281 

history, but a declaration of the present relation which 
exists at all times between God and man. So certainly 
the Fathers of the Church felt, or they would not have 
treated Scripture facts with the freedom of allegoric inter- 
pretation which we uniformly find in them. The " Iliad " 
is in form a history, the play of " Hamlet " is in form a 
history, and doubtless some historical facts lay at the 
basis of both one and the other. But the exact incidents 
which happened in the Troad or at Elsinore are irrelevant 
to the truth of the "Iliad" or the truth of "Hamlet." 
History is true or false, as it corresponds, or does not cor- 
respond, to facts which occurred once, and never literally 
repeat themselves. A play or a poem is true if it contains 
a true picture of human nature ; and it embodies not a 
single order of facts, or the inferences from a single order 
of facts, but the faithful observation of all human phe- 
nomena. Truth is thus of more kinds than one ; and the 
truth which is of most importance to mankind is not the 
truth of a particular fact which occurred once in time, 
but the truth of the eternal facts of the constitution of 
the universe, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 



A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND 
CENTUKY. 



In the Acts of the Apostles we meet with a class of per- 
sons whose features have in our own times become again 
familiar to us — quacks and conjurers professing to be in 
communication with the spiritual world, and regarded with 
curiosity and interest by serious men high in rank and au- 
thority. Sergius Paulus was craving for any light which 
could be given to him, and in default of better teaching had 
listened to Ely mas the Sorcerer. Simon Magus, if we may 
credit Catholic tradition, was in favor at the Imperial 
Court of Rome, where he matched his power against St. 
Peter's, and was defeated only because God was stronger 
than the devil. The " curious arts " of these people were 
regarded both by Christian and heathen as a real mastery 
of a supernatural secret ; and in the hunger for information 
about the great mystery with which the whole society was 
possessed, they rose, many of them, into positions of extra- 
ordinary influence and consequence. Asia Minor seems to 
have been their chief breeding ground, where Eastern 
magic came in contact with Greek civilization, and impos- 
ture was able to disguise itself in the phrases of philosophy. 

Apollonius of Tyana was the most remarkable of these 
adventurers. His life, unfortunately, has been written by 
believers in his pretensions ; and we have no knowledge 
of what he looked like to cool observers. The Apollonius 
of Philostratus is a heathen saviour, who claimed a com- 
mission from heaven to teach a pure and reformed relig- 
ion, and in attestation of his authority went about healing 
the sick, raising dead men to life, casting out devils, and 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 283 

prophesying future events which came afterwards to pass. 
The interesting fact about ApoUonius is the extensive 
recognition which he obtained, and the ease with which his 
pretensions found acceptance in the existing condition of 
the popuhir mind. Out of the legends of him little can be 
gathered, save the barest outline of his history. He was 
born four years before the Christian era in Tyana, a city 
of Cappadocia. His parents sent him to be educated at 
Tarsus in Cilicia, a place of considerable wealth and repute, 
and he must have been about beginning his studies there 
when St. Paul as a little boy was first running about the 
streets. The life in Tarsus being too luxurious for Apollo- 
nius's aspirations, he became a water-drinker and a vege- 
tarian, and betook himself as a recluse to the temple of 
iEsculapius at Mg^. ^sculapius, as the god of healing, 
and therefore the most practically useful, had become the 
most popular of the heathen divinities. He alone of them 
was supposed to remain beneficently active, and even to 
appear at times in visible form in sick-rooms and by sick- 
beds. ApoUonius's devotion to -^sculapius means that he 
studied medicine. On the death of his father he divided 
his property among the poor, and after five years of retire- 
ment he travelled as far as India in search of knowledge. 
He discoursed with learned Brahmins there, and came 
home with enlightened ideas, and with some skill in the 
arts of the Indian jugglers. With these two possessions he 
began his career as a teacher in the Roman Empire. He 
preached his new religion, and he worked miracles to in- 
duce people to believe in him. He was at Rome in Nero's 
time, when Simon Magus and St. Peter are said to have 
been there. Perhaps tradition has confused ApoUonius 
with Simon Magus, or Simon Magus with ApoUonius. In 
the convulsions which followed Nero's murder, being then 
an old man, he attached himself to Vespasian in Egypt. 
Vespasian, who was not without his superstitions, and him- 
self had been once persuaded to work a miracle, is said to 



284 A Cagliostro of the Second Centura/, 

have looked kindly on him and patronized him, and Apollo- 
iiius blossomed out into glory as the spiritual adviser of the 
Ves]3asian dynasty. The cruelties of Domitian estranged 
him. He was accused of conspiring with Nerva, and of 
having sacrificed a child to bribe the gods in Nerva's in- 
terest. He was even charged with having pretended to 
be a god himself. He was arraigned, convicted, and was 
about to suffer, when he vanished out of the hands of the 
Roman police, to reappear at Ephesus, where he soon after 
died. 

Clearly enough, we are off the ground of history in much 
of this. If Apollonius died at Ephesus in Nerva's time, he 
was a hundred years old at least, and must have been a 
contemporary and neighbor of St. John, who is supposed to 
have been writing his Gospel in the same city about that 
very time. 

However that may be, it is certain that after his death a 
temple was raised to Apollonius at the place of his birth, 
and Tyana became a privileged city. Similar honors were 
assigned elsewhere to him as an evidence of the facility 
and completeness with which he had gained credit for his 
pretended divine commission. The truth about him is 
probably that he was a physician, and had obtained some 
real knowledge of the methods of curing diseases. In 
India, besides philosophy and juggling, he may have learnt 
to practise what is now called animal magnetism ; and find- 
ing that he had a real power on the nervous system of h3^s- 
terical patients, the nature of which he did not understand, 
he may have himself believed it to be supernatural. With 
these arts he succeeded in persuading his countrymen that 
he was " some great one," " a great power of God ; " and 
both in life and death, in an age when tlie traditionary re- 
ligion was grown incredible, and the human race was crav- 
ing for a new revelation, Apollonius of Tyana, among many 
others, was looked upon through a large part of the Roman 
Empire as an emanation of the Divine nature. Such 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 285 

AT periods are the opportunities of false prophets. Mankind 
when they grow enthusiastic mistake their hopes and im- 
aginations for evidence of truth, and run like sheep after 
every new pretender who professes to hold the key of the 
mystery which they are so passionately anxious to pene- 
trate. 

Our present business, however, is not with the prophet 
of Tyana. Apollonius left a school of esoteric disciples 
behind him, with one of whom we are fortunately able to 
form a closer acquaintance. Apollonius we see through a 
mist of illusion. Alexander of Abonotichus we are able 
to look at with the eyes of the cleverest man who was alive 
on this planet in the second century. With the help of 
Lucian's portrait of Alexander we can discern, perhaps, the 
lineaments of Apollonius himself. We can see, at any 
rate, what these workers of miracles really were, as well as 
the nature of the element in which they made their con- 
quests, at the side of, and in open rivalry with, the teachers 
of Christianity. 

A word first about Lucian himself. At the Christian 
era, and immediately after it, the Asiatic provinces of the 
Empire were singularly i:>roductive of eminent men. The 
same intercourse of Eastern and Western civilization which 
produced the magicians was generating in all directions an 
active intellectual fermentation. The " disciples " were 
" called Christians first at Antioch." It was in Asia Minor 
that St. Paul first established a Gentile Church. There 
sprang up the multitude of heresies out of conflict with 
which the Christian creeds shaped themselves. And by 
the side of those who were constructing a positive faith 
were found others, who were watching the phenomena 
round them with an anxious but severe scepticism, unable 
themselves to find truth in the agitating speculations which 
were distracting everybody that came near them, but with 
a clear eye to distinguish knaves and impostors, and a reso- 
lution as honorable as St. Paul's to fight with and expose 



286 A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 

falsehood wherever they encountered it. Among these the 
most admirable was the satirist, artist, man of letters, the 
much-spokeii-of and little-studied Lucian, the most gifted 
and perhaps the purest-hearted thinker outside the Church 
who was produced under the Roman Empire. He was 
born at Samosata on the Euphrates about the year 120. 
He was intended for a sculptor, but his quick discursive in- 
tellect led him into a wider field, and he spent his life as a 
critic of the spiritual phenomena of his age. To Chris- 
tianity he paid little attention. To him it appeared but as 
one of the many phases of belief which were showing them- 
selves among the ignorant and uneducated. But it was 
harmless, and he did not quarrel with it. He belonged to 
the small circle of observers who looked on such things 
with the eyes of men of science. Cool-headed, and with 
an honest hatred of lies, he ridiculed the impious theology 
of the established pagan religion ; with the same instinct he 
attacked the charlatans who came, like Apollonius, pretend- 
ing to a Divine commission. He was doing the Church's 
work when he seemed most distant from it, and was strug- 
gling against illusions peculiarly seductive to the class of 
minds to whom the Church particularly addressed itself. 
Thus to Lucian we are indebted for cross lights upon the 
history of times which show us how and why at that par- 
ticular period Christianity was able to establish itself. His 
scientific contemporaries were more antagonistic to it than 
himself. The Celsus against whom Origen wrote his great 
defence was probably Lucian's intimate friend. But if 
Christianity was incredible and offensive to them, men like 
Apollonius of Tyana were infinitely more offensive. Chris- 
tianity was at most a delusion. Apollonius of Tyana they 
hated as a quack and a scoundrel. Besides the treatise 
which Origen answered, Celsus wrote a book against the 
magicians. Lucian speaks of Apollonius in a letter to Cel- 
sus as if they were both agreed about the character of the 
prophet of Tyana, and had this book survived we should 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 287 

have perhaps found a second picture there of Apollonius, 
which would have made impossible the rash parallels which 
have been attempted in modern times. The companion 
picture of Alexander of Abonotichus, by Lucian himself, 
happily remains. When the world was bowing down be- 
fore this extraordinary rascal, Lucian traced out his his- 
tory, and risked his own life in trying to explode the im- 
posture. Though human folly proved too strong, and 
Alexander died like Apollonius, with the supernatural au- 
reole about him, Lucian, at the express desire of Celsus, 
placed on record a minute account of the man, lucid to the 
smallest detail. He describes him as a servant of the 
devil, in the most modern sense of the word — not of the 
prince of the power of the air, as a Christian Father would 
have described him, with evil genii at his bidding, but of the 
devil of lying and imposture with whom nowadays we are so 
sadly familiar. He commences with an apology for touch- 
ing so base a subject ; he undertakes it only at his friend's 
request. Nor can he tell the entire story. Alexander of 
Abonotichus was as great in rascaldom as Alexander of 
^lacedon in war and politics. His exploits would fill large 
volumes, and the most which Lucian could do was to select 
a few basketfuls from the dungheap and offer them as 
specimens. Even thus much he feels a certain shame in 
attempting. If the wretch had received his true deserts, 
he would have been torn in pieces by apes and foxes in 
the arena, and the very name of him would have been 
blotted out of memory. Biographies, however, had been 
written, and had given pleasure, of distinguished highway- 
men ; and an account of a man who had plundered, not a 
small district, but the whole Roman Empire, might not be 
without its uses. 

With these few words of contemptuous preface Lucian 
tells his story ; and in a form still more abridged we now 
offer it to our readers. 

Abonotichus was a small coast town on the south shore 



288 A Cagliostro of the Second Century. 

of the Black Sea, a few miles west of Sinope. At this 
place, at the beginning of the second century, the future 
prophet was brought into the world. His parents were in 
a humble rank of life. The boy was of unusual beauty ; 
and having no inclination to work and a very strong in- 
clination for pleasure, he turned his advantages to abomi- 
nable account. By and by he was taken up by a doctor who 
had been one of Apollonius's disciples. The old villain 
had learnt his master's arts. He understood medicine, 
could cure stomachaches and headaches, set a limb, or assist 
at a lying-in. But besides his legitimate capabilities, he 
had set up for a magician. He dealt in spells and love- 
charms ; he could find treasures with a divining rod, dis- 
cover lost deeds and wills, provide heirs for disputed in- 
heritances, and, when well paid for it, he knew how to mix 
a poison. In these arts the young Alexander became an 
apt pupil, and was useful as a sort of famulus. He learnt 
Apollonius's traditionary secrets, and at the age of twenty, 
when his master died, he was in a condition to practise on 
his own account. 

He was now thrown on the world to shift for himself. 
But his spirits were light, and his confidence in himself was 
boundless : as long as there were fools with money in their 
pockets, he could have a well-founded hope of transferring 
p:irt of it to his own. A provincial town was too small a 
theatre of operations. He set off for Byzantium, the great 
mart of ancient commerce, which was thronged with mer- 
chants from all parts of the world. Like seeks like. At 
Byzantium, Alexander made acquaintance with a vagabond 
named Cocconas, a fellow who gained a living by foretell- 
ing the winners at games and races, lounging in the betting 
rings, and gambling with idle young gentlemen. By this 
means he found entrance into what was called society. Al- 
exander was more beautiful as a man than as a boy. Coc- 
conas introduced him to a rich Macedonian lady, who was 
spending the season in the city. The lady fell in love with 



A Cagllostro of the Second Century, 289 

him, and, on her return to her country seat at Pella, car- 
ried Alexander and his friend along with her. This was 
very well for a time ; but the situation, perhaps, had its 
drawbacks. Aspiring ambition is not easily satisfied ; and 
the young heart began to sigh for a larger sphere. 

In the midst of pleasure he had an eye for business. In 
Macedonia, and especially about Pella, there was at this 
time a great number of large harmless snakes. They came 
into the houses, where they were useful in keeping down 
rats and mice; they let the children play with them; they 
crept into beds at night, and were never interfered with. 
From this local peculiarity the story, perhaps, originated of 
the miraculous birth of Alexander the Great. It occurred 
to the two adventurers that something might be made of 
one of these serpents. They bought a very handsome speci- 
men, and soon after they left Pella, taking it with them. 

For a while they lounged about together, carrying on 
Cocconas's old trade, and expanding it into fortune-telling. 
Fools, they observed, were always craving to know the 
future, and would listen to any one who pretended to see 
into it. In this way they made much money, and they 
found the art so easy that their views went higher. 'They 
proposed to set up an oracular shrine of their own, which 
would take the place of Delphi and Delos. The pytho- 
nesses on the old-established tripods were growing silent. 
Apollo, it seemed, was tired of attending them, and inquir- 
ers were often sent away unsatisfied. There was clearly a 
want in the world, and Alexander and his friend thought 
they saw their way towards supplying it. 

The loss of oracles was not the whole of the misfortune. 
The world was beginning to feel that it had even lost God. 
The Greek mythology had grown incredible. The Epi- 
cureans were saying that there was no such thing as Provi- 
dence, and never had been. The majority of people were 
still of a different opinion ; but they were uneasy, and were 
feeling very generally indeed that if gods there were, they 



19 



290 A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 

ought to make tlieir existence better known. Here was an 
opportunity, not only of making a fortune, but of vindi- 
cating the great principles of religion and becoming bene- 
factors of humanity. 

Tiicy decided to try. Sleight of hand and cunning might 
succeed when philosophy had failed. Was it said there 
were no gods? Tliey would produce a god, a real visible 
god, that men could feel and handle, that would itself speak 
and give out oracles, and so silence forever the wicked un- 
believers. So far they saw their way. The next question 
was, the place where the god was to appear. Cocconas 
was for Chalcedon, on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. 
It was a busy town, almost as full of merchants as Byzan- 
tium, the population all engaged with speculation, and 
money in any quantity to be made there. This was good 
as far as it went. l)ut Chalcedon was too much in the 
light. The pagan gods, as the shrewder Alexander knew, 
were not fond of commercial cities. Christianity might 
thrive there ; but caves, mountains, and woods, remote isl- 
ands, retired provincial villages, suited better with Apollo 
and -/Esculapius. Traders' wits were sharpened with busi- 
ness, and they might be unpleasantly curious. The simple 
inhabitants of the interior, Phrygians and Bithynians, Gala- 
tians and Cappadocians, would be an easier prey where a 
reputation had first to be created — and success depended 
upon a favorable beginning. At his own Abonotichus, he 
told Cocconas that a man had only to appear with a life 
and drum before him, and clashing a pair of cymbals, and 
the whole population would be on their knees before him. 

The better judgment of Alexander carried the day. 
Abonotichus itself was decided on as the theatre of opera- 
tions. Cocconas, however, was allowed to introduce Chal- 
cedon into the first act of the drama, ^sculapius, the best 
believed in of the surviving divinities, was the god who 
was to be incarnated. Joe Smith must have read Lucian's 
story, and have taken a hint from it. In the temple of 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 291 

Apollo at Chalcedon the bold adveuturers buried some 
brass plates, bearing an inscription that Apollo and iEscu- 
lapius were about to visit Pontus, and that -^sculapius 
would appear at Abonotichus in a bodily form. The plates 
were conveniently discovered, and became the talk of the 
bazaars. Merchants going and coming spread the story. 
Asia Minor was excited, as well it might be. At the favored 
Abonotichus the delighted people resolved to build a temple 
to receive the god at his coming, and they set to work at 
once, clearing the ground for the foundations. 

The train being thus well laid, Alexander had no further 
need of a comjDanion. Cocconas was a vulgar type of rogue, 
unfit for the decorous hypocrisies which were now to be 
acted. He was left behind on some pretext at Chalcedon, 
where he died, it was said from a snake-bite, and so drops 
out of sight. The supreme performer returned, with the 
field to himself, to his native town. Lucian describes him 
as he then appeared : tall, majestic, extremely handsome, 
hair long and flowing, complexion fair, a moderate beard, 
partly his own and partly false, but the imitation excellent, 
eyes large and lustrous, and a voice sweet and limpid. As 
to his character, says Lucian, " God grant that I may never 
meet with such another. His cunning was wonderful, his 
dexterity matchless. His eagerness for knowledge, his ca- 
pacity for learning, and power of memory were equally ex- 
traordinary." 

The simple citizens of Abonotichus, on the watch al- 
ready for the coming of a god among them, had no chance 
against so capable a villain. They had not seen him since 
the wonderful days of his boyhood, when he had been 
known as i\\Q famulus of an old wizard. He now present- 
ed himself among them, his locks wildly streaming, in a 
purple tunic, with a white cloak thrown over it. In his 
hand he bore a falchion like that with which Perseus had 
slain the Gorgon. He chanted a doggerel of Alexandrian 
metaphysics, with monads and triads, pentads and decads, 



292 A Cayliostro of the Second Century. 

playing in anagrams upon his own name. He liad learnt 
from an oracle, he said, that Perseus was his mother's an- 
cestor, and that a wonderful destiny had been foretold for 
him. He rolled his beautiful soft eyes. With the help of 
soap-wort he foamed at the mouth as if possessed. The 
poor people had known his mother, and had no conception 
of her illustrious lineage. But there was no disputing with 
an oracle. Wliat an oracle said must be true. He was re- 
ceived with an ovation, all the town bowing down before 
him, and he then prepared for his next step. 

The snake throughout the East was the symbol of 
knowledge and immortality. The serpent with his tail 
in his mouth represented the circle of eternity. The 
serpent in annually shedding its skin was supposed to re- 
new its life forever. A sect even of Gnostic Christians 
were serpent-worshippers. From the time of tlie brazen 
serpent in the wilderness, it was the special emblem of the 
art of healing ; and if the divine physician ever appeared 
on earth in visible shape, a snake's was the form which he 
might be expected to assume. 

The snake whicli liad been bought at Pella was now to 
be applied to its purpose. The monster, for it was of enor- 
mous size, had accompanied Alexander through his subse- 
quent adventures. It had become so tame that it would coil 
about his body, and remain in any position which he desired. 
He had made a human face out of linen for it, which he 
had painted with extreme ingenuity. The mouth would 
open and shut by an arrangement of horsehair. The black 
forked tongue sliot in and out, and the creature had grown 
accustomed to its mask and wore it without objection. 

A full-grown divinity being thus ready at hand, the in- 
tending prophet next furnished himself with the e,gg of a 
goose, opened it, cleared out the contents, and placed inside 
a small embryo snake just born. This done, he filled the 
cracks and smoothed them over with wax and white lead, 
^sculapius's temple was meanwhile making progress. The 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century. 293 

foundations had been dug, and tliere were pits and holes, 
wliich a recent rain liad filled with water. In one of tliese 
muddy pools Alexander concealed his egg^ as he had done 
the plates at Chalcedon, and the next morning he rushed 
into the market-place in a state of frenzy, almost naked, a 
girdle of gold tissue about his waist, hair streaming, eyes 
flashing, mouth foaming, and the Perseus falchion wheeling 
about his head. The crowd collected, at the sight of him, 
frantic as himself. He sprang upon some mound or bench. 
" Blessed," he cried, " be this town of Abonotichus, and 
blessed be they that dwell in it! This day the prophecy is 
fulfilled, and God is coming to take his place among us." 

The entire population was out, old and young, men and 
women, quivering with ho[)e and emotion. Alexander 
made an oration in an unknown tongue ; some said it was 
Hebrew, some Phoenician, all agreed that it was inspired. 
The only words articulately heard were the names of 
Apollo and JEsculapius. When he had done he set up the 
familiar Psalm of the Sun God, and moved, with the 
crowd singing in chorus behind him, to the site of the 
temple. He stepped into the water, offered a prayer to 
JEscuhipius, and then, asking for a bowl, he scooped his 
eooj out of the mud. 

" iEsculapius is here," he said, holding it for a moment 
in the hollow of his hand. And then, with every eye fixed 
on him in the intensity of expectation, he broke it. The tiny 
creature twisted about his fingers. " It moves, it moves ! " 
the people cried in ecstasy. Not a question was asked. To 
doubt would have been impious. They shouted. They 
blessed the gods. They blessed themselves for the glory 
which they had witnessed. Health, wealth, all pleasant 
things which the god could give, they saw raining on the 
happy Abonotichus. Alexander swept back to his house, 
bearing the divinity in his bosom, the awe-struck peo[)le 
following. For a few days there was a pause, while the 
tale of what had happened spread along the shores of the 



294 A Cagliostro of the Second Century. 

Black Sea. Then on foot, on mules, in carts, in boats, 
multitudes flocked in from all directions to the birthplace 
of ^Esculapius. The roads were choked with them ; the 
town overflowed with them. " They had the forms of 
men," as Lucian says, " but they were as sheep in all be- 
sides, heads and hearts empty alike." Alexander was ready 
for their reception. He had erected a booth or tabernacle, 
with a door at each end and a railed passage leading from 
one door to the other. Behind the rail, on a couch, in a sub- 
dued light, the prophet sat, visible to every one, the snake 
from Bella wreathed about his neck, the coils glittering 
amidst the folds of his dress, the tail playing on the ground. 
The head was concealed ; but occasionally the prophet raised 
his arm, and then appeared the awful face, the mouth mov- 
ing, the tongue darting in and out. There it was, the ver- 
itable traditionary serpent with the human countenance 
which appears in the medioeval pictures of the Temptation 
and the Fall. 

The prophet told the spectators that into this mysteri- 
ous being the embryo that was found in the Qgg had de- 
veloped in a few days. The place was dark ; the crowd 
which was pressing to be admitted was enormous. The 
stream of worshippers passed quickly from door to door. 
They could but look and give place to others. But a single 
glance was enough for minds disposed to believe. The ra- 
pidity of the creature's growth, so far from exciting sus- 
picion, was only a fresh evidence of its miraculous nature. 
The first exhibition was so successful that others followed. 
The first visitors had been chiefly the poor; but as the 
fame of the appearance spread, the higher classes caught 
the infection. Men of fortune came with rich offerings ; 
and so confident was Alexander in their folly that those 
who gave most liberally were allowed to touch the scales 
and to look steadily at the moving mouth. So well the 
trick was done that Lucian says, " Epicurus himself would 
have been taken in." " Nothing could save a man but a 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century. 295 

mind with the firmness of adamant, and fortified by a 
scientific conviction that the thing which he supposed him- 
self to see was a physical impossibility." 

The wonder was still imperfect. The divinity was there, 
but as yet he had not spoken. The excitement, however, 
grew and spread. All Asia Minor was caught with it. 
The old stories were true, then. There were gods, after all, 
and the wicked philosophers were wrong. Heavy hearts 
were lifted up again. From lip to lip the blessed message 
flew ; over Galatia, over Bithynia, away across the Bos- 
l^horus, into Thrace and Macedonia. A god, a real one, 
had been born at Abonotichus, with a serpent's body and 
the face of a man. Pictures were taken of him. Imases 
were made in brass or silver and circulated in thousands. 
At length it was announced that the lips had given an 
articulate sound. 

" I am Glycon, the sweet one," the creature had said, 
" the third in descent from Zeus, and the light of the world." 

The temple was now finished. Proper accommodation 
had been provided for ^sculapius and his prophet priest ; 
and a public announcement was made that the god, for a 
fit consideration, would answer any questions which might 
be put to him. There was a doubt at first about the tariff. 
Amphilochus, who had migrated from Thebes to a shrine 
in Cilicia, and had been prophesying there for ten centuries, 
charged two obols, or three pence, for each oracle ; but 
money had fallen in value, and answers directly from a god 
were in themselves of higher worth, ^sculapius, or Alex- 
ander for him, demanded eight obols, or a shilling. Days 
and hours were fixed when inquirers could be received. 
They were expected to send in their names beforehand, and 
to write their questions on a paper or parchment, which 
they might seal up in any way that they pleased. Alex- 
ander received the packets from their hands, and after a 
day, or sometimes two days, restored them with the answers 
to the questions attached. 



296 A Cagliostro of the Second Century. 

People came, of course, in thousands. The seals being 
apparently unbroken, the mere fact that an answer was 
given of some kind predisposed them to be satisfied with it. 
Either a heated knife-blade had been passed under the wax, 
or a cast of the impression was taken in collyrium and a 
new seal was manufactured. The obvious explanation oc- 
curred to no one. People in search of the miraculous never 
like to be disappointed. Either they themselves betray 
their secrets, or they ask questions so foolish that it cannot 
be known whether the answer is true or false. Most of 
the inquirers came to consult ^sculapius about their health, 
and Alexander knew medicine enough to be able generally 
to read in their faces what was the matter with them. Thus 
they were easily satisfied, and went away as convinced as 
when they arrived. The names being given in beforehand, 
private information was easily obtained from slaves or com- 
panions. Shrewd guesses were miracles, when they were 
correct, and one success outweighed a hundred failures. In 
cases of difficulty the oracular method was always in re- 
serve, with the ambiguities of magniloquent nonsense. The 
real strength of Alexander was in his professional skill, 
which usually was in itself all-sufficient. He had a special 
quack remedy of his own, which he prescribed as a panacea, 
a harmless plaster made out of goat's fat. To aspiring pol- 
iticians, young lovers, or heirs expectant, he replied that 
the fates were undecided, and that the event depended on 
the will of ^sculapius and the intercessions of his prophet. 

Never was audacity greater or more splendidly rewarded. 
The gold ingots sent to Delphi were as nothing compared 
to the treasures which streamed into Abonotichus. Each 
question was separately paid for, and ten or fifteen were 
not enough for the curiosity of single visitors. The work 
soon outgrew the strength of a single man. The prophet 
had an army of disciples, who were munificently paid. They 
were employed, some as servants, some as spies, oracle 
manufacturers, secretaries, keepers of seals, or interpreters 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 297 

of the various Asiatic dialects. Each applicant received 
his answer in his own tongue, to his overwhelming admira- 
tion. Success brought ftesh ambitions with it. Emissaries 
were dispersed througli the ICmpire spreading tlie fame of 
the new prophet ; instigating fools to consult the oracle, 
and letting Alexander know who they were and what they 
wanted. If a slave had run away, if a will could not be 
found, if a treasure had been secreted, if a robbery was un- 
discovered, Alexander became the universal resource. The 
air was full of miracles. The sick were healed. The dead 
were raised to life, or were reported and were believed to 
have been raised, which came to the same thing. To be- 
lieve was a duty, to doubt was a sin. A god had come on 
earth to save a world which was perishing in skepticism. 
Simple hearts were bounding with gratitude ; and no devo- 
tion could be too extreme, and no expression of it in the 
form of offerings too extravagant, ^sculapius might have 
built a throne of gold for himself out of the pious contribu- 
tions of the faithful. 'Being a god, he was personally dis- 
interested ; " gold and silver," he said through the oracle, 
" were nothing to him ; he commanded only that his servant 
the prophet should receive the honors due to him." 

High favor such as had fallen upon Alexander could not 
be enjoyed without some drawbacks. The world believed, 
but an envious minority remained incredulous, and whis- 
pered that the pi'ophet was a charlatan. The men of sci- 
ence persisted that miracles were against nature, and that a 
professing woiker of miracles was necessarily a rogue. The 
Christians, to whom Lucian does full justice in the matter, 
regarded Alexander as a missionary of the devil, and ab- 
horred both him and his works. Combinations were formed 
to expose him. Traps were cleverly laid for him, into which 
all his adroitness could not save him from occasionally fall- 
ing. But he had contrived to entangle his personal credit 
in the great spiritual questions which were agitating man- 
kind, and to enlist in his interest the pious side of pagan- 



298 A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 

ism. The schools of philosophy were divided about him. 
The respectable sects, Platonists, Stoics, and Pythagoreans, 
who believed in a spiritual system underlying the sensible, 
saw in the manifestation at Abonotichus a revelation in har- 
mony with their theories. If they did not wholly believe, 
they looked at it as a phenomenon useful to an age which 
was denying the supernatural. 

Alexander, quick to catch at the prevailing influences, 
flattered the philosophers in turn. Pythagoras was made 
a saint in his calendar. He spoke of Pythagoras as the 
greatest of the ancient sages. He claimed to represent 
him ; at length he let it be known privately that he was 
Pythagoras. He gilt his thigh, and the yellow lustre was 
allowed to be seen. The wise man of Samos was again 
present unrecognized, like Apollo among the herdsmen of 
Admetus. 

The philosophers of the second century, if Lucian can be 
believed, were not a lofty set of beings. They professed 
sublime doctrines, but the doctrines had little effect on their 
lives, and the different schools hated one another with genu- 
ine sectarian intensity. The Pj^thagoreans were little bet- 
ter than their rivals, but their teaching was more respecta- 
ble. They insisted that men had souls as well as bodies. 
They believed in immortality and future retribution, and 
they had the sympathies with them of the decent part of 
society. Alexander's instinct led him to them as the best 
friends he could have ; and they in turn were ready to play 
into his hands in their own interests. By their mystical 
theories they were the natural victims of illusion. Opinions 
adopted out of superstition or emotion cannot be encoun- 
tered by reason. They are like epidemic diseases which 
seize and subdue the mental constitution. They yield only 
when they have spent their force, and are superseded by 
other beliefs of an analogous kind. The spiritual w^orld is 
ruled by homoeopathy, and one disorder is only cured by a 
second and a similar one. 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century. 299 

Thus supported, therefore, Pythagoras Alexander replied 
to attempts at exposure by open defiance. Pontus, he said, 
was full of blaspheming atheists and Christians ; ^scula- 
pius was displeased that, after he had condescended to come 
among his people, such wretches should be any longer toler- 
ated ; and he demanded that they should be stoned out of 
the province. A pious inquirer was set to ask after the 
soul of Epicurus. JEsculapius answered that Epicurus was 
in hell, lying in filth and in chains of lead. The Pythago- 
reans clapped their hands. Hell, they had always said, was 
the proper place for him ; and in hell he was ; the oracle 
had declared it. 

It is very interesting to find two classes of men, gen- 
erally supposed to be so antagonistic as the men of science 
and the Christians, standing alone together against the 
world as the opponents of a lying scoundrel. The explana^ 
tion of their union was that each of them had hold of a 
side of real truth, while the respectable world was given 
over to shadows. The Epicureans understood the laws of 
nature and the principles of evidence. The Christians had 
a new ideal of human life and duty in them, which was to 
regenerate the whole race of mankind. It was thus fit and 
ri<rht that they should work together against a wretch who 
understood nothing but human folly and the art of playing 
upon it, and against the gulls and idiots who were ready to 
swallow any absurdity which surprised or flattered them. 

The Epicureans were Alexander's most dangerous ene- 
mies ; for they had friends in the higher circles of society. 
Amestris, between Abonotichus and the Bosphorus, was the 
seat of the provincial administration. Lepidus, the Roman 
propra3tor, was a man of sense and culture. The town 
took its intellectual tone from him, and was unfavorable 
to the prophet's pretensions. Ingenious tricks had been 
played upon him from that quarter with too much success; 
and he had been driven to announce that for the future no 
inquiries sent from Amestris would be entertained. Some 



300 A Cagliostro of the Second Century. 

mockeries had followed. Alexander could not afford to let 
the public enthusiasm cool, and mistakes for the future 
must be avoided, ^^sculapius had hitherto communicated 
with his worshippers in writing. When he uttered sounds, 
it was in private to the prophet. To silence doubt, the ser- 
pent was now to be heard directly speaking. A tube was 
fitted, through which articulate noises could be made to 
issue from the snake's mouth with the help of a confederate 
behind the curtain. Select visitors only were admitted to 
this especially sacred performance, and a liigh price had to 
be paid for it. But the experiment was tried with perfect 
SJiccess ; and the method was found to have its conveniences. 
The word-of-mouth oracles were taken down and were 
given afterwards to the world; but if mistakes had been 
made, they could be altered before publication. An accident 
of the kind happened shortly after, which might have been 
disastrous if the original practice had been followed, but 
which Alexander was able to turn into a brilliant success. 

Severian, a Roman general, had been sent by the Em- 
peror Verus to invade Armenia. He called at Abonoti- 
chus on his way, to learn if he was likely to succeed, and 
^sculapius encouraged him with his own lips in bad 
Hom<^ric verse. He had told Severian that he would sub- 
due the Armenians, and return in glory to Rome with the 
bay wreath on his temples and wearing the golden circlet 
of Apollo. Severian, whether he believed ^sculapius or 
not, went his way, lost his army, and was himself killed. 
The oracle was immediately reversed. The line which 
appeared in the published record was: " Go not against the 
Armenians, where death and disaster await thee." Thus 
out of "the nettle danger" Alexander "had plucked the 
flower safety." The death of Severian was explained by 
his neglect or defiance of the warning. In another way, 
too, he showed his prudence. He made friends at the rival 
shrines. jMonopolies, he knew, were odious and dangerous. 
If -<3Esculapius spoke through him, Apollo spoke now and 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 301 

then elsewhere. He would sometimes tell a patient that 
he had no message for him, and that he must go for advice 
to Claros or to the cave of the Branchidai. 

Thus he continued to baffle his detractors, and to rise 
from t^lory to glory. His fame reached the Imperial Court, 
and to consult Alexander became the fashion in high 
Roman society. Ladies of rank, men of business, intrigu- 
iu<'- generals or senators, took into their counsels the 
prophet of Abouotichus. Some who had perilous political 
schemes on hand were rash enough to commit their secrets 
to paper, and to send them, under the protection of their 
seals, for the opinion of ^sculapius. The prophet, when 
he discovered matter of this kind, kept the packets by him 
without returning them. He thus held the writers in his 
power, and made them feel that their lives were in his 
hands. 

And there were others in high position, men of thought 
who were waiting for some kind of revelation, that sought 
him out from purer motives. Rutilian, a senator, in favor 
with the Emperor, a man of ability, who had passed his 
life in the public service, and still held an important office, 
adopted Alexander for his spiritual father. Rutilian was 
a l*ythagorean of most devout temperament, assiduous in 
prayers to the Invisible Being or Beings of whose exist- 
ence he was assured. When he heard that iEsculapius had 
come into the world, he had already a predisposition to be- 
lieve, and was prevented only by public duties from flying 
to learn if the news was true. He could not go to Pontus 
himself, but he sent friends on whom he could rely, and 
whose temperament resembled his own. The majestic ap- 
pearance of the prophet, the inspired eyes, the rich, sweet 
voice, awed them into immediate conviction. They were 
shown wonders; but they liad believed before they had 
seen, and they returned to Rome to exaggerate what they 
had witnessed. Rutilian, receiving their report into his 
own eager imagination, brought it out of the crucible again 



302 ^ Cagliostro of the Second Century. 

transfigured yet more gloriously. He was a man of known 
piety and veracity, incapable of conscious falsehood, true 
and just in all his dealings. Astonished Rome could not 
yet wholly surrender itself. Officers of the imperial house- 
hold hastened over to see with their own eyes. It had not 
occurred to them that they might see things which they 
could not explain, yet that what they saw might be no 
more than a trick. Men without scientific training who 
trust their own judgment in such matters are the natural 
prey of charlatans. These gentlemen came to Abonotichus. 
They were received with the highest honors. Alexander 
disjDlayed his miracles to them, made them handsome pres- 
ents, and sent them home open-mouthed to glorify JEscu- 
lapius and his prophet in the fullest confidence that they 
were speaking nothing but the truth. Rutilian was tri- 
umphant. He was now either relieved from office, or he 
obtained leave of absence, and at last was able to throw 
himself in person at the apostle's feet. He was sixty years 
old at the time when the acquaintance began. His wife 
was dead, and he had one only son. The first question 
which he asked Alexander was about his boy's education. 
Alexander told him that his teachers were to be Pythagoras 
and Homer. The child died, and went to his tutors in 
Hades ; and the prophet at the first step had given a con- 
vincing proof of his inspiration. Lucian, in his contempt 
of folly, half pardons Alexander when such a man as 
Rutilian was so eager to be his dupe. The new disciple, 
being a Pythagorean, believed iti preexistence. He asked 
through what personalities he had himself passed already. 
Alexander told him that he had been no less a person than 
Achilles. After Achilles he had been Menander, and when 
his present life was over he was to become immortal, and 
live thenceforward as a sunbeam. Rutilian believed it all. 
No absurdity was too monstrous for him ; while he on his 
part was infinitely useful to Alexander. Few skeptics were 
hardy enough thenceforward to question the character of 
the friend of the Emperor's favorite. 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 303 

Among his fern-ale adorers or connections, of whom 
Alexander had as many as Brigham Young, there was a 
girl whom he called his daughter, on the mother's side of 
exalted parentage. Selene, or the Moon, had seen Alexan- 
der sleeping like Endymion, had become enamoured of him, 
and had descended to his embraces. The young lady he de- 
clared to be the offspring of this celestial union. Rutilian, 
being a widower, was informed that Selene and -^sculapius 
had selected him to be her husband. He was delighted. He 
believed the marriage to be an adoption into heaven. Like 
Menelaus, he would never die, being the son-in-law of a 
god, and the nuptials were celebrated with august solemnity. 

Abonotichus after this became a holy city, a Mecca, a 
place of pilgrimage. The prophet was a power in the 
Empire, and began to surround himself with pomp and 
display. Among other ceremonies he instituted a public 
service in the temple in imitation of the mysteries of 
Eleusis. That he was able to present such scenes with 
impunity is a most curious illustration of the mental con- 
dition of the time. 

The service commenced with a procession of acolytes, 
carrying torches, the prophet at their head, like the priests 
of Ceres, giving notice to the profane to keep aloof, and 
inviting the believers in JEsculapius to approach and take 
part in the holy mystery. The profane whom he specially 
meant were the Cin-istians and the atheists. The prophet 
spoke ; the congregation answered. The prophet said, 
"Away with the Christians!" The people replied, "Away 
with the atheists ! " Those who presented themselves for 
communion were examined first by Alexander to ascertain 
tlieir fitness. If found unorthodox, they were excluded 
from the temple. Tiie ceremonial then commenced. It 
consisted of a series of tableaux. The first day was given 
to representations of the lying-in of Latona, the birth of 
Apollo, the marriage of Apollo and Coronis, with the issue 
of it in the generation of JEsculapius. On the second day 



304 A Cagliostro of the Second Century. 

there was the incarnation of " the sweet one," with the 
Chalcedou plates, the goose egg, and the snake. Alexan- 
der himself was the hero of the third. A new revelation, 
it seems, had informed him of mysterious circumstances 
attending his own comins; into the world. His mother 
had been visited by Podalirius, iEsculapius's mythical son. 
The temple was then brilliantly illuminated. The prophet, 
after some preliminary gesticulations, laid himself down, as 
Endymion, to sleep upon a couch. Selene, the Moon, per- 
sonated by the beautiful wife of an officer of the imperial 
court, who was the prophet's mistress, descended upon him 
from the roof and covered him with kisses, the husband 
looking on, delighted with the honor which had fallen 
upon him. In the final scene, Alexander reappeared in his 
priestly dress. A hymn was sung to the snake, the congre- 
gation accompanying or responding. The choir then formed 
into a circle and went through a mystic dance, the prophet 
standing in the centre. 

Tlie miraculous birth of Alexander, after being thus 
announced, was made into an article of faith, which the 
disciples were bound to receive. A difficulty arose which 
had not been foreseen. If he was the son of a god, how 
could he be Pythagoras ? and how came he by the golden 
thigh ? He was equal to the occasion ; he was not Pythago- 
ras, he said, and yet he was. He had the same soul with 
Pythagoras ; for that soul was the Spirit of God, which 
waned and wa;5 renewed like the moon. The Spirit de- 
scended from heaven at special times and on special per- 
sons, and again ascended when its purpose was attained. 
The gold thigh was perhaps explained as its accompanying 
symbol. 

Having identified himself with the Pythagoreans, he 
announced with authority the general truth of their doc- 
trines. He insisted on an elevated morality, and directed 
his disciples to abstain from sensual vices. The rules, 
however, had no application to himself, and behind the 



A Cagliostro of the Second Centur^, 305 

veil he created a Cyprian paradise. His reputation being 
so well established, the privilege of admission to the temple 
rites was eagerly sought after. 

The oracle, meanwliile, was active as ever, and now and 
then by its mistakes produced frightful injustice. A Paphla- 
gonian gentleman had sent his son to be educated at Alex- 
andria. The boy had joined an expedition up the Nile, 
where he fell in with some merchants on their way to the 
Red Sea and India. Curiosity led him to accompany them ; 
and his household in the city, who had charge of him, after 
waiting for a while and finding that he did not come back, 
concluded that he had been drowned in the river, and re- 
turned to Paphlagonia with the news that the boy was dead. 
The father consulted the seer of Abonotichus. Alexander 
informed him that his son had been made away with by the 
servants. The Roman governor was appealed to. The 
word of Alexander, supported as he was by Rutilian, was 
conclusive, and the unfortunate wretches were thrown to 
the wild beasts. Soon after, the boy appeared, none the 
worse for his journey ; and an indignant friend of the family 
went to Abonotichus to expose the impostor before his 
worshippers. Unfortunately, a superstition once established 
is proof against commonplace evidence. Alexander only 
answered by telling the congregation to stone the blas- 
phemer, who was rescued when nearly dead by the inter- 
position of a casual traveller. 

Another adventure into which he fell might have been 
more dangerous. The war of Marcus Aurelius with the 
Marcomanni was the occasion of the celebrated story in 
Christian mythology of the Thundering Legion. It is 
difficult, and even impossible, to reconcile the account of 
the war in the Christian legend with Lucian's description 
of it ; but Lucian was alive at the time, and when he saj^s 
that the Emperor was disastrously defeated, he is unlikely 
to have been mistaken. Lucian says that Marcus Aure- 
lius, before he began the campaign, applied to Alexander. 

20 



306 ^ Cagliostro of the Second Century, 

Alexander told him that if he devoted two lions to the gods 
aud threw them into the Danube, there would be a glorious 
victory and a happy peace. The lions swam the river, 
landed on the opposite bank, and were immediately killed. 
The Emperor lost a battle and many thousand men. Aqui- 
leia itself nearly escaped being taken. 

This catastrophe tried the faith even of Rutilian. Alex- 
ander, however, told him that the gods had foretold a vic- 
tory, but had not allowed him to know on which side the 
victory would be. Rutilian resisted temptation and con- 
tinued to believe. 

Affairs, however, had become serious, when such a man 
was allowed to play with the interests of the Empire. In- 
telligent Romans went to Abonotichus to make inquiries, 
and were so troublesome that iEsculapius had to interfere. 
When a stranger arrived, the god decided whether he was to 
be admitted to reside in the town. A suspicious visitor was 
ordered to depart under penalties. At last, as a public 
warning against the dangerous spirit of scepticism, Alex- 
ander burnt a copy of the writings of Epicurus in the mar- 
ket square, and threw the ashes into the sea. Lepidus of 
Amestris, the Roman governor, made another effort. The 
prophet was on his guard against laymen ; but a priest, it 
was thought, might be more fortunate. A priest was sent, 
but unluckily the priest was a fool and gave Alexander a 
new triumph. He was granted an interview with " the 
sweet one," and conversation followed which Lucian saw 
hung up in a temple at Tium, written in letters of gold : — 

Priest. Tell me, Lord Glycon, who art thou ? 

Glycon. I am the young ^sculapius, the second and not the 
first. This is a mystery, which may not be revealed. 

Priest. How lono; wilt thou remain with us ? 

Glycon. My time is a thousand years and three. Then I go 
to the East to the barbarians. They also must hear my woi-d. 

Priest. What will become of me after this life ? 

Glycon. First thou wilt be a camel, and then a prophet like 
Alexander. 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 307 

The dialogue ended with a curse on Lepidus for his in- 
quisitiveness and unbelief. 

Other means failing, the adventure was next undertaken 
by Lueian himself. Lucian was a friend of Rutilian. He 
had many times remonstrated with him. He had en- 
deavored to prevent his marriage. He had protested 
against the countenance which Rutilian was lending to a 
lying rogue. Rutilian pitied Lucian's hardness of heart, 
and perhaps advised him to go to Abonotichus and exam- 
ine for himself. Lucian, at any rate, went. Rutilian's 
friendship secured him respectful treatment. Alexander 
received him with extreme courtesy, and he admits that 
the prophet's manners and appearance surprised and struck 
him. But Lucian was fortified with a conviction that all 
pretenders to supernatural powers were enthusiasts or im- 
postors, that miracles had never been and could not be. He 
tried -^sculapius with unusual questions. He asked him 
first if the prophet wore false hair. He sealed his envelope 
so skilfully that it could not be opened, and he received an 
answer in an " unknown tongue." He discovered next 
that the prophet had been sounding his valet as to Lucian's 
object in coming to him. The valet was faithful, and 
Lucian bade him tell Alexander that he was suffering from 
a pain in his side. He then wrote, himself, on two slips of 
paper, "What was the birthplace of Homer?" enclosed 
them in two packets, and sealed them as before. The valet 
informed the prophet that one referred to the pain, and 
that the other was to ask whether his master should return 
to Italy by land or sea. The replies were, first, an advice 
to try Alexander's plaster ; secondly, an intimation that a 
voyage would prove dangerous. These experiments would 
have been enough for Lucian, but his object was rather to 
convince his friend than himself, and he tried again. 

This time he wrote, " When will the villanies of Alex- 
ander be exposed ? " At the back of the envelope he made 
a note that it contained eight questions, all of which he 



308 A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 

paid for. The prophet was completely caught ; he returned 
eight answers, the whole of them unintelligible ; and with 
demonstration, as he thought, in his hands, Lucian went to 
his friend. 

He found his labor thrown away. Belief in the mar- 
vellous does not rise from evidence and will not yield to it. 
There is the easy answer, that infidels are answered accord- 
ing to the impiety of their hearts, that the gods will not 
and perhaps cannot work miracles in the presence of scep- 
tics. Nothing came of this first visit except that Lucian 
lost the regard of his friend whom Alexander warned 
against him. But he had become interested in the matter ; 
he determined to j^robe the mystery to the bottom. He 
went to the governor and offered, if he could have security 
for his life, to furnish him with proofs of the imposition 
which would justify the interference of the police. 

The governor gave him a guard of soldiers, and thus 
attended he went to Abonotichus a second time. The 
prophet was holding his levee. Lucian presented himself, 
neglecting to make an obeisance, to the general scandal. 
The prophet took no notice, but gave him his hand to kiss, 
and Lucian bit it to the bone. The believers shrieked, and 
Lucian would have been strangled but for his guard. Alex- 
ander, however, to his surprise and real admiration, bore 
the pain manfully. He told his friends that he and his god 
had tamed ruder spirits than Lucian's ; he bade them all 
retire, and leave him and his visitor together. 

When they were alone, he asked Lucian quietly why a 
person whose acquaintance he had valued, was determined 
to be his enemy. Calmness is always agreeable. Lucian 
never doubted for a moment Alexander's real character, 
but the prophet interested him in spite of himself. That 
he might study him at leisure, he accepted his overtures, 
and even entered into some kind of intimacy with him. 
He stayed for some days at Abonotichus. The worshippers 
were astonished to find an open blasphemer admitted to 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 809 

confidential intercourse with their chief ; and Alexander 
undoubtedly succeeded, if not in disarming his guest's sus- 
picions, yet in softening the vehemence of his dislike. He 
was so clever, so well informed, apparently so frank and 
open, that, as Lucian said, he would have taken in Epi- 
curus himself. The search for evidence against him was 
dropped, the governor's guard was sent home, and Lucian 
after a prolonged visit accepted an offer from Alexander to 
send him by water to the Bosphorus. The prophet placed 
at his disposition one of his finest vessels, saw him on 
board, loaded him with presents, and so dismissed him. 

Keener-witted man than Lucian was not alive on earth ; 
yet his wit had not saved him from being to some extent 
deceived, and he had a near escape of paying with his life 
for his credulity. He had not been long at sea when he 
observed the pilot and crew consulting together. The crew 
were insisting upon something to which the pilot would not 
consent. The pilot at length came to him and said that 
"Alexander's orders were that Lucian was to be thrown 
overboard ; he had a wife and children, he had lived re- 
spectably for sixty years, and did not wish in his old age to 
stain his conscience with a murder. He could not go on 
to the Bosphorus, but he would put his passenger on shore.'* 

Lucian was landed in Bithynia. He was a person of 
considerable public influence. He had powerful friends in 
the province and at Rome. He was looked on favorably 
by Marcus Aurelius himself. He laid his story before the 
governor, not Lepidus, but another \ and Lucian, if any- 
one, might be assured that what he said would receive at- 
tention. But in an era of belief, reason and fact are power- 
less ; the governor told him tl at if he could convict Alex- 
ander on the clearest evidence it would be impossible to 
punish him. Prophet he was in the opinion of the whole 
country, and prophet he would remain. Lucian was as 
little successful as his predecessors, and his interference 
had gained him nothing except materials for the singular 



310 A Cagliostro of the Second Century. 

account which he has left behind. Rutilian was abandoned 
to fate and to the daughter of the Moon, and the glories of 
the prophet of Abonotichus were established above the 
reach of calumny. The Emperor bestowed distinctions on 
him. The name of his town was changed. Coins were 
struck, and now are extant, with " the sweet one's " face 
on one side and Alexander's on the other. He lived to be 
an old man, and died with his fame undimmed and the be- 
lief in him unabated. What became of the snake, history 
omits to tell. 

The superstition did not break in pieces at once. The 
oracle continued to prophesy after Alexander's death, and 
there was a competition among the disciples as to which of 
them was to succeed him. The favorite candidate was an 
old physician, who, Lucian says, ought not to have been 
found in such company. The dispute was referred at last 
to Rutilian, who decided that no successor was needed. 
Alexander was not dead, but was translated merely into a 
better world, from which he still watched over his faithful 
followers. 

So ends this singular story, valuable for the light which 
it throws on a critical epoch in human history, and espe- 
cially on the disposition of the people among whom Paul 
and Barnabas were taken for gods, and among whom Paul 
founded his seven churches. Christianity exactly met what 
they were searching for in an ennobling and purifying form, 
and saved those who accepted it from being the victims of 
sham prophets like Alexander. To persons so circum- 
stanced, men of intellect like Lucian addressed themselves 
in vain. The science of Epicurus was merely negative. 
He might insist that miracles were an illusion, and that the 
laws of nature were never broken ; but to the human heart 
cravinir for liirht from heaven, and refusini; to be satisfied 
without it, Epicurus had not a word to say, not a word of 
what lay behind the veil, not a word which would serve for 
guidance in the paths of ordinary duty. Intellect and ex- 



A Cagliostro of the Second Century, 311 

perience may make it probable to thouglitful persons that 
morality and happiness go together ; but when all is said, 
clever men are found of a different opinion ; and if the hu- 
man race had waited to recogi\ize the sanctions of moral 
obligation till science had made out on what they rested to 
its own satisfaction, the first steps out of barbarism would 
never have been taken. Knowledge is a plant which grows 
but slowly. Those who gather knowledge must live before 
they can learn. How to live, therefore, how to distinguish 
good from evil, press first for an immediate answer. And 
the answer was given by conscience whole a;ons before re- 
flecting intellect had constructed its theories of expediency 
and the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 

Out of conscience grows religion ; but religion when St. 
Paul came was dead, and the educated multitudes in the 
Empire were sitting by the body of it, unable to believe 
that it was gone, and still passionately hoping that the si- 
lent gods would again speak to them out of heaven. So in- 
tense was the longing, that reason had abdicated its proper 
function ; any plausible pretender could collect disciples in 
millions ; and to an audience thus prepared to receive it, 
Christianity was originally offered. Independence of phi- 
losophy, the better sort of men hate evil and impurity ; their 
instincts were recognized and justified in the new creed, 
and they welcomed it as a reviving principle of moral life. 
It did not save them from illusions which men of science 
would have escaped. Holiness of life is no protection 
aiTJiinst freaks of imairination ; God is so near to the be- 
liever that he sees His action everywhere, and the hagiol- 
ogy of the early Church is as full of legend as the pagan 
mythology. The apocryphal gospels breathe a spirit to the 
full as credulous as the story of the incarnation of Glycon 
at Abonotichus ; with this essential and enormous difference, 
however, that the credulity of the Christians was dominated 
by conscience, and they detected a polluted impostor with 
as sure an instinct as the most cultivated Epicurean. 



CHENEYS AND THE HOUSE OF RUS- 
SELL. 

ERASER'S MAGAZINE, 1879. 



"The gardener and his wife," Mr. Tennyson tells us, 
" laugh at the claims of long descent." If it be so, the 
laugh is natural, for our first parents were " novi homines^ 
and could not appreciate what they did not possess. Never- 
theless, in all nations which have achieved any kind of 
eminence, particular families have stood out conspicuously 
for generation after generation as represeutatives of polit- 
ical principles, as soldiers or statesmen, as ruling in their 
immediate neighborhoods with delegated authority, and re- 
ceiving homage voluntarily offered. They have furnished 
the finer tissues in the corporate body of the national life, 
and have given to society its unity and coherence. In 
times of war they have fallen freely on the battle-field. In 
times of discord and civil strife their most illustrious mem- 
bers have been the first to bleed on the scaffold. An Eng- 
lish family, it has been said, takes rank according to the 
number of its members which have been executed. With 
men, as with animals and plants, peculiar properties are 
propagated by breeding. Each child who has inherited a 
noble name feels a special call to do no dishonor to it by 
unworthy actions. The family falls in pieces when its char- 
acteristics disappear. But, be the cause what it may, there 
is no instance, ancient or modern, of any long protracted 
national existence where an order of aristocracy and gentry 
is not to be found preserving their identity, their influence, 
and their privileges of birth through century after century. 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 313 

They have no monopoly of genius. A gifted man rises out 
of the people, receiving his patent of nobility, as Burns said, 
"direct from Almighty God." He makes a name and a 
position for himself. But when the name is made, he hands 
it on, with distinction printed upon it, to his children and 
his children's children. More is expected from the sons of 
eminent parents than from other men, and if the transmit- 
ted quality is genuine, more comes out of them. It is not 
talent. Talent is but partially hereditary, if at all. The 
virtue that runs in the blood is superiority of courage or 
character ; and courage and character, far more than clever- 
ness, are the conditions indispensable for national leaders. 
Thus without exception, in all great peoples, hereditary 
aristocracies have formed themselves, and when aristocra- 
cies have decayed or disappeared, the state has degenerated 
along with them. The fall of a nobility may be a cause of 
degeneracy, or it may only be a symptom ; but the phe- 
nomenon itself is a plain matter of fact, true hitherto under 
all forms of political constitution, monarchic, oligarchic, or 
republican. Republics have held together as long as they 
have been strung with patrician sinews ; when the sinews 
crack, the public becomes a democracy, and the unity of 
the commonwealth is shivered into a heap of disconnected 
atoms, each following its own laws of gravitation towards its 
imagined intere'^ts. Athens and Rome, the Italian Repub- 
lics, the great kingdoms which rose out of the wreck of the 
Roman Empire, tell the same story. The modern Spaniard 
reads the records of the old greatness of his country on 
the tombs of the Castilian nobles, and in the rnins of their 
palaces. They and the glory of the Spanish race have de- 
parted together. The Alvas and the Olivarez's, the Da 
Leyvas and Mendozas may have deserved their fall ; but 
when they fell, and no others had arisen in their places, 
the nation fell also. Hitherto no great state has been able 
to sustain itself in a front place without an aristocracy of 
some kind maintained on the hereditary principle. On this 



314 Cheneys mid the House of Russell. 

point the answer of history is uniform. The United States 
may inaugurate a new experience. With the one exception 
of the Adams's, the great men who have shown as yet in 
American history have left no representatives to stand at 
present in the front political ranks. There are no Wash- 
ingtons, no Franklins, no Jeffersons, no Clays or Randolphs 
now governing States or leading debates in Congress. How 
long this will continue, how long the determination that all 
men shall start equal in the race of life will prevail against 
the instinctive tendencies of successful men to perpetuate 
their names, is the most interesting of political problems. 
The American nationality is as yet too young for conclu- 
sions to be built on what it has done hitherto, or has for- 
borne to do. We shall know better two centuries hence 
whether equality and the ballot-box provide better leaders 
for a people than the old methods of birth and training. 
France was cut in pieces in the Revolution of 1793, and 
flung into the Medean caldron, expecting to emerge again 
with fresh vitality. The rash experiment has not succeeded 
up to this time, and here too we must wait for what her 
future will bring forth. So far, the nations which have 
democratized themselves have been successful in producing 
indefinite quantities of money. If money and money-mak- 
ing will secure their stability, they may look forward hope- 
fully — not otherwise. 

We, too, have travelled far on the same road. We can 
continue to say, " Thank God we have still a House of 
Lords," but it is a House of Lords which is allowed to 
stand with a conditional tenure. It must follow, it must 
not lead, the popular will. It has been preserved rather 
as an honored relic of a state of things which is passing 
away, than as representing any actual forces now existing. 
We should not dream of creating a hereditary branch of 
legislature if we had to begin over again ; being there, we 
let it remain as long as it is harmless. Nevertheless, great 
families have still a hold upon the country, either from 



Cheneys a7id the House of Russell. 815 

custom or from a sense of their value. Fifty years are 
gone since the great democratic Reform Bill, yet the hered- 
itary peers must still give their consent to every law which 
passes. Their sons and cousins form a majority in the 
House of Commons, and even philosophic Radicals doubt if 
the character of the House would be improved without men 
there whose position in society is secured, and who can 
therefore afford to be patriotic. How long a privileged 
order will hold its ground against the tendencies of the age 
depends upon itself and upon the objects which it places 
before itself. If those who are within the lines retain, on 
the whole, a superior tone to those outside, and if access to 
the patrician order is limited to men who have earned ad- 
mission there by real merit, the Upper House will be left in 
spite of ballot and universal suffrage, or perhaps by means 
of them, for generations to come. But the outlook is not 
without its ugly features, and should anything happen to 
stir the passions of the people as they were stirred half 
a century ago, the English peerage would scarcely live 
through another storm. 

Whatever future may be in store for them, the past at 
any rate is their own, and they are honorably proud of 
it. The Roman preserved in his palace the ashes of his 
titled ancestors, and exhibited their images in his saloons. 
Tlie English noble hangs the armor which was worn at 
Flodden or Crecy in his ancestral hall. The trophies and 
relics of generations are among the treasures of his family. 
The stately portraits of his sires look down upon him from 
the walls of his dining-room. When he dies, his desire is, 
like the prayer of the Hebrews, to be buried in the sepul- 
chre of his fathers. There only is the fitting and peaceful 
close of a life honorably spent. There the first founder 
of the family and his descendants rest side by side, after 
time has ceased for each of them, to be remembered to- 
gether by the curious who spell through their epitaphs, 
and to dissolve themselves into common dust. Occasionally, 



316 CheneyB and the House of Russell. 

as a more emphatic memorial, the mausoleum becomes a 
mortuary chapel attached to some parish church or cathe- 
dral. The original purpose was of course that a priest, 
specially appointed, should say masses there immediately 
close to the spot where their remains were lying. The 
custom has outlived the purpose of it, and such chapels are 
to be met with in Protestant countries as often as in 
Catholic. The most interesting that I ever saw is that of 
the Mendozas in the cathedral at Burgos. It is the more 
affecting because the Mendozas have ceased to exist. 
Nothing survives of them save their tombs, which, splendid 
as they are, and of the richest materials, are character- 
istically free from meretricious ornament. There lie the 
figures of the proudest race in the whole nobility of Spain ; 
knight and lady, prelate and cardinal. The stories of the 
lives of most of them are gone beyond recovery, and yet in 
those stone features can be read character as pure and grand 
as ever did honor to humanity. If a single family could 
produce so magnificent a group, we cease to wonder how 
Spain was once the sovereign of Europe, and the Spanish 
Court the home of courtesy and chivalry. 

Next in interest to the monuments of the Mendozas, and 
second to them only because the Mendozas themselves are 
gone, are the tombs of the house of Hussell in the chapel 
at Cheneys, in Buckinghamshire. The claims of the 
Russells to honorable memory the loudest Radical will 
acknowledge. For thre# centuries and a half they have 
led the way in what is called progress. They rose with the 
Reformation. They furnished a martyr for the Revolution 
of 1688. The Reform Bill is connected forever with the 
name of Lord John. To know the biographies of the 
dead Russells is to know English history for twelve genera- 
tions ; and if the progress with which we are so delighted 
leads us safely into the Promised Land, as we are bound to 
believe that it will, Cheneys ought to become hereafter 
a place of pious pilgrimage. 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 817 

The villasfe stands on a chalk hill rising from the little 
river Ches, four miles from Rickmansvvorth, on the road 
to Amersham. The estate belongs to the Duke of Bedford, 
and is pervaded by an aspect of serene good manners, as if 
it was always Sunday. No vulgar noises disturb the general 
quiet. Cricket may be played there, and bowls and such 
games as propriety allows ; but the oldest inhabit-ant can 
never have heard an oath spoken aloud, or seen a drunken 
man. Dirt and poverty are equally unknown. The houses, 
large and small, are solid and substantial, built of red brick, 
with high chimneys and pointed gables, and well-trimmed 
gardens before the doors. A Gothic fountain stands in the 
middle of the village green, under a cluster of tall elms, 
where picturesque, neatly dressed girls go for the purest 
water. Beyond the green a road runs, on one side of 
which stands the church and the parsonage, on the other the 
remains of the once spacious manor house, which was built 
by the first Earl of Bedford, on the site of an old castle of 
the Plantagenet kings. One wing of the manor house only 
survives, but so well constructed, and of material so admi- 
rable, that it looks as if it had been completed yesterday. 
In a field under the window is an oak which tradition says 
was planted by Queen Bess. More probably it is as old as 
the Conquest. The entire spot, church, mansion, cottages, 
and people, form a piece of ancient England artificially 
preserved from the intrusion of modern ways. No land is 
let on building lease in Cheneys to be disfigured by con- 
tractors' villas. No flaring shops, which such villas bring 
behind them, make the street hideous. A single miscel- 
laneous store supplies the simple wants of the few inhabi- 
tants — the bars of soap, the bunches of dip candles, the 
tobacco in ounce packets, the tea, coffee, and sugar, the 
balls of twine, the strips of calico. Even the bull's-eyes 
and gingerbread for the children are not unpermitted, if 
they are honestly made and warranted not to be poisonous. 
So light is the business that the tidy woman who presides 



318 Cheneys and the House of Russell, 

at the counter combines with it the duties of the post-office, 
wliich again are of the simplest kind. All is old-fashioned, 
grave, and respectable. No signs are to be found of com- 
petition, of the march of intellect, of emancipation, of the 
divine right of each man and woman to do what is good in 
their own eyes — of the blessed liberty which the House of 
Russell has been so busy in setting forward. The inhabi- 
tants of Cheneys live under authority. The voice of the 
Russell s has been the voice of the emancipator — the hand 
has been the hand of the rulinof noble. 

The Manor House contains nothing of much interest. 
In itself, though a fragment, it is a fine specimen of the 
mason work of the Tudor times, and if not pulled down 
will be standing strong as ever when the new London 
squares are turned to dust heaps. With its high-pitched 
roofs and its clusters of curiously twisted chimneys it has 
served as a model for the architecture of the village, the 
smallest cottages looking as if they had grown from seeds 
which had been dropped by the central mansion. 

All this is pretty enough, but the attraction of the place 
to a stranger is the church and what it contains. I had 
visited it before more than once, but I wished to inspect the 
monuments more closely. I ran down from London, one 
evening in June, to the village inn, and in the morning, 
soon after sunrise, when I was in less danger of having the 
officious assistance thrust upon me of clerk or sexton, I 
sauntered over to see if I could enter. The keys were kept 
at an adjoining cottage. The busy matron was already up 
and at her work. When I told her that I had special per- 
mission, she unlocked the church door and left me to myself. 
Within, as without, all was order. No churchwardens, it 
was plain enough, had ever been allowed to work their will 
at Cheneys. Nay, the unchallenged loyalty of the Bedford 
family to constitutional liberty must have saved the church 
from the visits of the Commissioners of the Long Parlia- 
ment. On the walls are old Catholic brasses, one repre- 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 319 

senting a parisli priest of the place with the date of 
1512, and a scroll praying for mercy on his soul. Strange 
to think that this man had said mass in the very place 
where I was standing, and that the memory of him had 
been preserved by the Russells, till the wheel had come 
round again and a Catholic hierarchy had been again es- 
tablished in England, with its Cardinals and Archbishops 
and Bishops. Will mass be ever said in Cheneys again ? — 
not the sham mass of the Ritualists, but the real thing ? 
Who that looks on England now can say that it will not ? 
And four miles off is Amersham, where John Knox used to 
preach, and Queen Mary's inquisitors gathered their batches 
of heretics for Smithfield. On the pavement against the 
wall lies the stone figure of an old knight, finished only 
from the waist upwards. The knight is in his armor, his 
wife rests at his side ; the hands of both of them reverently 
folded. Opening from the church on the north side, but 
private, and not used for service, is the Russell Chapel. 
Below is the vault where the remains lie of most of the 
family who have borne the name for three centuries and a 
half. 

On a stone tablet over the east window are the words 
" This Chapel is built by Anne, Countess of Bedford, wife 
to John, Earl of Bedford, a. d. 1556." It was the year in 
which Queen Mary was most busy offering her sacrifices 
to persuade Providence to grant her an heir. The chapel, 
therefore, by a curious irony, must have been consecrated 
with Catholic ceremonies. 

The earliest monument is the tomb of this Lady Anne ^ 
and her husband, and is one of the finest of its kind in 
Europe. The material is alabaster ; the pink veins in the 
stone being abundant enough to give a purple tint to the 
whole construction. The workmanship is extremely elab- 
orate, and belongs to a time when the temper of men was 

1 Through some blunder, she is described on the monument as Lady 
Elizabeth. 



320 Cheneys and the House of Russell, 

still manly and stern, and when the mediaeval reverence for 
death was still unspoiled by insincerity and affectation. The 
hands are folded in the old manner. The figures are not 
represented as sleeping, but as in a trance, with the eyes 
wide open. The faces are evidently careful likenesses ; the 
Earl has lost an eye in action — the lid droops over the 
socket as in life. His head rests on his corslet, his sword is 
at his side. He wears a light coronet, and his beard falls low 
on his breast. The features do not denote a man of genius, 
but a loyal and worthy servant of the State, cautious, pru- 
dent, and thoughtful. The lady's face is more remarkable, 
and it would seem' from the pains which had been taken 
with it that the artist must have personally known and ad- 
mired her, while the Earl he may have known only by his 
portrait. The forehead of the Lady Anne is strong and 
broad, the nose large, the lips full but severely and ex- 
pressively closed. She looks upward as she lies, with awe, 
but with a bold heart, stern as a Roman matron. The 
head is on a cusliion, but the Earl's baldric would have 
formed as suitable a pillow for a figure so commanding and 
so powerful. It is a pity that we know so little of this lady. 
She was the daughter of Sir Guy Sapcote, of Huntingdon- 
shire. Her mother was a Cheney, and through her the 
Cheneys estate fell to its present owners. She had been 
twice married and twice a widow when her hand was sought 
by Sir John Russell. At that time she was in the house- 
hold of Catherine of Arragon ; but she had no liking for 
the cause which Catherine represented, or for Catherine's 
daughter either. She died while Mary was still on the 
throne, but in her will she gave a significant proof that she 
at least had not bowed the knee when Baal was brought in 
again. She bequeathed her soul to Almighty God, " trust- 
ing only by the death and passion of his dear Son, Jesus 
Christ, to be saved." " This is all that can be said of " the 
mighty mother " of the Russells, to whose side they are 
gathered as they fall ; but if the stern portrait speaks 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 321 

truth, her sons have inherited gifts from her more precious 
by far than the broad lands in Bedford and Huntingdon. 

The Russells, or Rozels, are on the Battle Roll as having 
come from Normandy with the Conqueror. They played at 
their part under the Plantagenets, not without distinction, 
and towards the end of the fifteenth century were a substan- 
tial family settled at Barwick, in Dorsetshire. In the year 
1506, John, son and heir of the reigning head of the house, 
had returned from a tour on the continent, bringing back 
with him accomplishments rare at all times with young, 
proud Englishmen, and at that day unheard of save among 
the officially-trained clergy. Besides his other acquisitions 
he could speak French, and probably German. It happened 
that in that winter the Archduke Philip, with his mad wife 
Joanna, sister of Catherine of Arragon, was on his way 
from the Low Countries to Spain. As he was going down 
Channel he was driven by a gale into Weymouth, and hav- 
ing been extremely sea-sick, he landed to recover himself. 
Foreign princes are a critical species of guest. The rela- 
tions of Henry VII. with Joanna's father, Ferdinand, were 
just then on a doubtful footing. Prince Arthur was dead. 
Catherine was not yet married to his brother Henry, nor 
was it at all certain that she was to marry him ; and when 
so great a person as the Archduke, and so nearly connected 
with Ferdinand had come into England uninvited, the 
authorities in Dorsetshire feared to let him proceed on his 
voyage till their master's pleasure was known. A courier 
was despatched to London, and meanwhile Sir Thomas 
Trenchard, the most important gentleman in the neighbor- 
hood, invited the whole party to stay with him at Wolver- 
ton Hall. Trenchard was Russell's cousin. His own linguis- 
tic capabilities were limited, and he sent for his young 
kinsman to assist in the royal visitors' entertainment. 
Russell went, and made himself extremely useful. Henry 
VII., having pressed the Archduke to come to him at Wind- 
sor, the Archduke carried his new friend along with him, 

21 



322 Cheneys and the House of Russell. 

and spoke so warmly of his talents and character to the 
king that he was taken at once into the household. So com- 
menced the new birth of the Russell house. Most men have 
chances opened to them at one time or another. Young 
Russell was one of the few who knew how to grasp oppor- 
tunity by the forelock. He was found apt for any kind of 
service, either with pen or sword, brain or hand. He went 
with Henry VIH. to his first campaign in France. He 
was at the siege of Therouenne, and at the battle of the 
Spurs. For an interval he was employed in political negoti- 
ations. Then we find him one of sixteen English knights 
who held the lists against all comers at Paris on the mar- 
riage of Louis XII. with the Princess Mary. In the war 
of 1522 he lost his eye at the storming of Morlaix, and was 
knighted for his gallantry there. Immediately afterwards 
he was employed by Henry and Wolsey on an intricate and 
dangerous service. Louis XII. was dead. The friendship 
between England and France was broken, and Henry and 
his nephew, the Emperor Charles V., were leagued together 
against the young Francis. Charles was aiming at the con- 
quest of Italy. Henry had his eye on the French crown, 
which he dreamt of recovering for himself. Francis had 
affronted his powerful kinsman and subject, the Duke of 
Bourbon. Bourbon had intimated that if England would 
provide him with money to raise an army, he would recog- 
nize Henry as his liege lord, and John Russell was the 
person sent to ascertain whether Bourbon might be trusted 
to keep his word. Russell, it seems, was satisfied. The 
money was provided, and was committed to Russell's care, 
and the great powers of Europe made their first plunge 
into the convulsions which were to last for more than a 
century. Little did Henry and Charles know what they 
were doing, or how often they would change partners before 
the game was over. Bourbon invaded Provence, Sir John 
Russell attending upon him with the English treasure. The 
war rolled across the Alps, and Russell saw the great battle 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 323 

fought at Pavia, where France lost all save honor, and the 
French king was the prisoner of the Emperor. 

Then, if ever, was the time for Henry's dream to have 
been accomplished ; but it became too clear that the throne 
of France was not at Bourbon's disposition, and that even 
if he had been willing and able to keep his word, the Em- 
peror had no intention of allowing him to keep it. Henry 
and Wolsey had both been foiled in the object nearest to 
their hearts, for Henry could not take the place of Francis, 
and Wolsey, who had meant to be Pope, saw the Cardinal 
de Medici chosen instead of him. So followed a shift 
of policy. Charles V. was now the danger to the rest of 
Europe. Henry joined himself with France against his 
late ally. Francis was to be liberated from his Spanish 
prison, and was to marry Henry's daughter. Catherine of 
Arragon was to be divorced, and Henry was to marry a 
French princess, or some one else in the French interest. 
The adroit Russell, in Italy, was to bring Milan, Venice, 
and the Papacy into the new confederacy. An ordinary 
politician, looking then at the position of the pieces on the 
European chess-board, would have said that Charles, in 
spite of himself, would have been compelled to combine 
with the German princes, and to take up the cause of the 
Reformation. The Pope was at war with him. Clement, 
Henry, and Francis were heartily friends. Henry had 
broken a lance with Luther. Bourbon's army, which had 
conquered at Pavia, was recruited with lanz-knechts, either 
Lutherans or godless ruffians. Bourbon's army was now 
Charles's ; and food being scanty and pay not forthcoming, 
the duke was driven, like another Alaric, to fling himself 
upon Rome, and storm and plunder the imperial city. It 
is curious and touching to find Clement clinging in such a 
hurricane to P^ngland and Henry as his surest supports. 
Russell had been staying with him at the Vatican on the 
eve of the catastrophe. He had gone home before the Ger- 
mans approached, and missed being present at the most 



324 Cheneys and the House of Russell. 

extraordinary scene in the drama of the sixteenth century, 
when the Holy Fatfter, from the battlements of St. Angelo, 
saw his city sacked, his churches pillaged, his sacred sister- 
hoods outraged, his cardinals led in mockery on asses' 
backs through the streets by wild bands, acting under the 
order, or in the name, of the most Catholic King. 

An attitude so extravagant could not endure. A little 
while, and the laws of spiritual attraction had forced the 
various parties into more appropriate relations. The di- 
vorce of Catherine went forward ; the Pope fell back on 
Catherine's Imperial nephew. England broke with the 
Holy See, and the impulses which were to remodel the 
modern world flowed into their natural channel?. Rus- 
sell's friend, Thomas Cromwell, became Henry's chief min- 
ister ; and Russell himself, though the scheme which he had 
been employed to forward had burst like a bubble, still 
rose in his sovereign's confidence. He was at Calais with 
Henry in 1532 when Anne Boleyn was publicly received 
by Francis. He was active in the suppression of the mon- 
asteries, and presided at the execution of the Abbot of 
Glastonbury. Again, when Anne Boleyn fell into disgrace, 
Russell, who was now Privy Seal, was appointed with her 
uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, to examine into the charges 
against her. Through all the changes of Henry's later 
years, when the scaffold became so near a neighbor of the 
Royal closet, Russell remained always esteemed and trusted. 
At the birth of the young Edward he was made a peer, as 
Baron Rassell of Cheneys. The year after he received the 
Garter. As Warden of the Stannaries he obtained the lands 
and mines of the suppressed Abbey of Tavistock. When 
his old master died he was carried on with the rising tide of 
the Reformation ; he took Miles Coverdale for his chaplain, 
and obtained the Bishopric of Exeter for him. At his 
house in the Strand was held the conference on the Eucha- 
rist, when the strangest of all human superstitions was ban- 
ished for a time from the English liturgy. Lord Russell's 



Cheneys and the House of Russell, 325 

vigorous hand suppressed the Catholic rebellion in Devon- 
shire. The Earldom of Bedford came next. His estates 
grew with his rank. Woburn Abbey fell to him on easy 
terms, for the Lords of the Council were first in the field, and 
had the pick of the spoil. Faction never tempted him out 
of the even road. He kept aloof from the quarrels of the 
Seymours and the Dudleys. When Somerset was attainted, 
the choicest morsel of Somerset's forfeited estates — Covent 
Garden and " the seven acres " — was granted to the Earl 
of Bedford. Edward's death was a critical moment. Bed- 
ford, like the rest of his Council, signed the instrument for 
the succession of Lady Jane Grey. Like the rest, he 
changed his mind when he saw Lady Jane repudiated by 
the country. The blame of the conspiracy was thrown on 
the extreme Protestant faction. The moderate Liberals 
declared for Mary, and by retaining their places and their 
influence in the Council set limits to the reaction, and se- 
cured the next succession to Mary's sister. Mary's Gov- 
ernment became Catholic, but Russell continued Privy Seal. 
A rebellion broke out in Devonshire ; this time a Protes- 
tant one. Bedford was the person who put it down. His 
last public act was to go with Lord Paget to Spain to bring 
a Spanish husband home for his queen. He sailed with 
Philip from Corunna. He was at the memorable landing 
at Southampton, and he gave away his mistress at the mar- 
riage at Winchester. A few months later he died, after 
fifty years of service in the most eventful period of modern 
English history. His services were splendidly rewarded, 
and he has been reproached in consequence as a trimmer 
and a time-server. But revolutions are only successful 
when they advance on a line lying between two extremes, 
and resulting from their compound action. To be a trim- 
mer at such a time is to have discerned the true direction in 
which events are moving, and to be a wise man in whom 
good sense is stronger than enthusiasm. John Russell's lot 
was cast in an era of convulsion, when Europe was split 



326 Cheneys and the House of Russell. 

into hostile camps, when religion was a shuttlecock of fac- 
tion ; Catholics and Protestants, as they were alternately 
uppermost, sending their antagonists to stake or scaffold. 
Russell represented the true feeling of the majority of Eng- 
lishmen. They were ready to move with the age, to shake 
off the old tyranny of the Church, to put an end to monas- 
tic idleness, and to repudiate the authority of the Pope. 
But they had no inclination to substitute dogmatic Protes- 
tantism for dogmatic Catholicism. They felt instinctively 
that theologians knew but little, after all, of the subject for 
which they were so eager to persecute each other, and that 
the world had other interests beside those which were tech- 
nically called religious ; and on one point through all that 
trying time they were specially determined, that they would 
have no second war in England of rival Roses, no more 
fields of Towton or Barnet. They would work out their 
reformation, since a reformation there was to be, within the 
law and by the forms of it, and if enthusiasts chose to break 
into rebellion, or even passively to refuse obedience to the 
law like More or Fisher, they might be admired for their 
generous spirit, but they were struck down without hesita- 
tion or mercy. Who shall say that the resolution was not 
a wise one. or that men who acted upon it are proper ob- 
jects of historical invective ? 

The mission to Spain roimds off John Russell's story. 
It commenced with his introduction to Philip's grandfather. 
It ended with Philip's marriage to the English Queen. 
Throughout his life his political sympathies were rather 
Imperial than French, as English feeling generally was. 
He was gone before the Marian persecution assumed its 
darker character ; and until the stake became so busy, a 
wise liberal statesman might reasonably have looked on 
Mary's marriage with her cousin as promising peace for the 
country, and as a happy ending of an old quarrel. 

Lady Anne lived to complete the Cheneys chapel ; she 
died two years after her husband, and the Russells were 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 327 

then threatened with a change of fortune. The next Earl, 
Francis — Francis " with the big head " — was born in 
1528. His monument stands next that of his father and 
mother, and is altogether inferior to it. The two figures, 
the Earl himself and the Countess Margaret, are of alabas- 
ter like the first, and, though wanting in dignity, are not in 
themselves wholly offensive ; but according to the vile taste 
of the seventeenth century, they are tawdrily colored in 
white and red and gold, and are lowered from the worthi- 
ness of sculpture to the level of a hair-dresser's model or 
of the painted Highlander at the door of a tobacco shop. 
Piety in England had by this time passed over to the Puri- 
tans, and Art, divorced from its proper inspiration, repre- 
sented human beings as no better than wearers of State 
clothes. The Earl " with the big head " deserves a more 
honorable portrait of himself, or deserves at least that the 
paint should be washed off. He was brought forward early 
in public life. He was Sheriff of Bedfordshire when he 
was nineteen. He sate in the Parliament of 1553, when the 
Prayer-book was purged of idolatry. In religion, taught 
perhaps by his mother, he was distinctly Protestant, and 
when his father died he was laid hold of as suspect by 
Gardiner. He escaped and joined the English exiles at 
Geneva. At the accession of Elizabeth he was called home, 
restored to his estates, and placed on the Privy Council, and 
when it pleased Mary Stuart, then Queen of France, to as- 
sume the royal arms of England, and declare herself the 
riarhtful owner of the Ensjlish crown, the Earl of Bedford 
was sent to Paris to require that ambitious lady to limit 
those dangerous pretensions and to acknowledge her cousin's 
right. 

Here it was that Bedford began his acquaintance with 
JNIary Stuart ; an acquaintance which was to be renewed 
under more agitating conditions. At Geneva, he had been 
intimate with the leading Reformers, Scotch as well as Eng- 
lish. When Mary began her intrigues with the Catholic 



328 Cheneys and the House of Russell, 

party in England, Bedford was sent to Berwick as gov- 
ernor, where he could keep a watch over her doings, and 
be in constant communication with Knox and Murray. He 
received and protected Murray at the time of the Darnley 
marriage. Ruthven fled to him after the murder of Rizzio ; 
and from Ruthven's lips Bedford wrote down the remark- 
able despatch, describing the details of the scene in that 
suite of rooms at Holyrood which has passed into our his- 
torical literature. 

The Queen of Scots was regarded at this time by the 
great body of the English people as Elizabeth's indisputa- 
ble heir. Catholic though she might be, her hereditary 
right was respected as Mary Tudor's had been, and had 
Elizabeth died while Darnley was alive, she would have 
succeeded as easily as James succeeded afterwards. When 
James was born, he was greeted on his arrival in this world 
as a Prince of the Blood Royal, and Bedford was sent to 
Stirling to the christening with fine presents and compli- 
ments from his mistress. The shadow of the approaching 
tragedy hung over the ceremony. Bedford was conducted 
to the nursery to see the child in his cradle. Among the 
gifts which he had brought was a font of gold, which held 
the water in which James was made a Christian. Mary, in 
return, hung a chain of diamonds on Bedford's neck ; never 
missing an opportunity of conciliating an English noble. 
But the English ambassador was startled to observe that 
the Queen's husband seemed of less consideration in her 
Court than the meanest foot-boy. The Queen herself scarce 
spoke to him ; the courtiers passed him by with disdain. 
Bedford set it down to the murder of Rizzio, which he sup- 
posed to be still unforgiven, and he gave Mary a kindly 
hint that the poor wretch had friends in England whom in 
prudence she would do well to remember. Two months 
after came Kirk o' Field, and then the Bothwell marriage, 
Carberry Hill, Lochleven, Langside, the flight to England, 
the seventeen years in which the caged eagle beat her wings 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 329 

against her prison bars ; and, finally, the closing scene in 
the hall at Fotheringay. 

As his father had supported the rights of Mary Tudor, 
so the second Earl would have upheld the rights of Mary 
Stuart till she had lost the respect of the country. But 
after Darnley's death the general sense of England pro- 
nounced her succession to be impossible. Bedford stood 
loyally by his own mistress in the dangers to which she 
was exposed from the rage of the disappointed Catholics. 
He was not one of the Lords of the Council who were 
chosen to examine the celebrated Casket letters, for he was 
absent at Berwick ; but he sate on the trial of the Duke of 
Norfolk, and he joined in sending him to the scaffold. He 
died in 1585, two years before Mary Stuart's career was 
ended, but not before it was foreseen what that end must 
be. One other claim must not be forgotten which the 
second Earl possesses upon the memory of Englishmen, 
The famous Drake was born upon his estate at Tavistock. 
The Earl knew and respected his parents, and was god- 
father to their child, who derived from him the name of 
Francis. It was strange to feel that the actual remains of 
the man who had played a part in these great scenes were 
lying beneath the stones half a dozen yards from me. He 
sleeps sound, and the jangle of human discords troubles 
him no more. 

He had two sons, neither of whom is in the vaults at 
Cheneys. Francis, the eldest, was killed while his father 
was alive, in a skirmish on the Scotch border. William 
fought at Zutphen by the side of Philip Sidney. For five 
years he was Viceroy of Ireland, which he ruled at least 
with better success than Essex, who came after him. This 
William was made Lord Russell of Thornhaugh, and 
brought a second peerage into the family. Their sister 
Anne was married to Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, 
the brother of Elizabeth's Leicester. 

The third Earl, Edward, was the son of Francis who 



330 Cheneys and the House of Russell. 

was killed in the north, and succeded his grandfather when 
a boy of eleven. In him the family genius slept. He 
lived undistinguished and harmless, and died in 1627, hav- 
ing left unfulfilled even the simple duty of begetting an 
heir. He was followed by his cousin Francis, son of his 
uncle, Lord Thornhaugh, and the divided houses again be- 
came one. 

This Francis was called the wise Earl. He was a true 
Russell, zealous for the Constitution and the constitutional 
liberties of England. He had been bred a lawyer, and 
understood all the arts of Parliamentary warfare. At the 
side of Eliot, and Pym, and Selden, he fought for the 
Petition of Right, and carried it by his own energy through 
the House of Lords. Naturally he made himself an object 
of animosity to the Court, and he was sent to the Tower 
as a reward of his courage. They could not keep him as 
they kept Eliot, to die there. He was released, but the 
battle had to be waged with weapons which a Russell was 
not disposed to use. When he was released Parliamentary 
life in England was suspended. There was no place for a 
Russell by the side of Laud and Strafford, and Bedford set 
himself to improve his property and drain the marshes 
about Whittlesea and Thoiney. If solid work well done, 
if the addition of hundreds of thousands of acres to the soil 
available for the support of English life be a title to honor- 
able remembrance, this Earl ranks not the lowest in the 
Cheneys pantheon. He and his countess lie in the vault, 
with several of their children who died in childhood ; they 
are commemorated in a monument not ungraceful in itself, 
were not it too daubed with paint and vulgarized by gild- 
ing. One of the little ones is a baby, a bambino swaddled 
round with wrappings which had probably helped to choke 
the infant life out of it. 

The wise Earl died immediately after the opening of the 
Long Parliament. William Russell, his eldest son, had 
been returned to the House of Commons along with Pym 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 331 

as member for Tavistock. The Bedford interest doubtless 
gave Pym his seat there. His father's death removed him 
from the stormy atmosphere of the Lower House, and he 
was unequal to the responsibilities which his new position 
threw upon him. Civil war was not a theatre on which 
any Russell was likely to distinguish himself, and Earl 
William less than any of them. The old landmarks were 
submerged under the deluge. He was washed from side 
to side, fighting alternately in the field for King and Par- 
liament. He signed the Covenant in 1645, but he found 
Woburn a pleasanter place than the council chamber, and 
thenceforward, till Cromwell's death, he looked on and 
took little part in public life. Charles twice visited him ; 
once on his way back to Oxford after his failure at Chester, 
and again in 1647 when he was in the hands of the army, 
then quartered between Bedford and St. Albans. It was 
at the time of the army manifesto, when the poor King 
imagined that he could play off Cromwell against the 
Parliament, and in fact was playing away his own life. 
After the negotiations were broken off, Charles went from 
Woburn to Latimers, a place close to Cheneys, from the 
windows of which, in the hot August days, he must have 
looked down on the Cheneys valley and seen the same 
meadows that now stretch along the bottom, and the same 
hanging beech woods, and the same river sparkling among 
its flags and rushes, and the cattle standing in the shallows. 
The world plunges on upon its way ; generation follows 
generation, playing its part, and then ending. The quiet 
earth bears with them one after the other, and while all 
else changes, itself is changed so little. 

This Earl was memorable rather from what befell him 
than from anything which he did. He was the first Duke, 
and he was the father of Lord William, whom English 
constitutional history has selected to honor as its chief 
saint and martyr. The Russell s were not a family which 
was likely to furnish martyrs. They wanted neither 



832 Cheneys and the House of Russell, 

courage, nor general decision of character, but they were 
cool and prudent; never changing their colors, but never 
rushing on forlorn hopes, or throwing their lives away on 
ill-considered enterprises. 

Lord William, or Lord Russell, as he should be called, 
had perhaps inherited some exceptional quality in his 
blood. His mother was the beautiful Anne Carr, daughter 
of Carr, Earl of Somerset, the favorite of James L, and of 
Frances Howard, the divorced wife of the Earl of Essex, 
the hero and heroine of the great Oyer of poisoning, with 
its black surroundings of witchcraft and devilry. The old 
Earl Francis had sate upon their trial. He had been 
horrified when his son had proposed to marry the child of 
so ominous a pair. But Lady Anne was not touched by 
the crimes of her parents. Her loveliness shone perhaps 
the more attractively against so dark a background. Her 
character must have been singularly innocent, for she grew 
up in entire ignorance that her mother had been tried for 
murder. The family opposition was reluctantly withdrawn, 
and young Russell married her. 

This pair. Earl William — afterwards Duke — and the 
Lady Anne Carr, are the chief figures in the most osten- 
tatious monument in the Russell chapel. They are seated 
opposite each other in an attitude of violent grief, their 
bodies flung back, their heads buried in their hands in the 
anguish of petrified despair. They had many children, 
medallions of whom are ranged on either side in per- 
pendicular rows. In the centre is the eldest — the occa- 
sion of the sorrow so conspicuously exhibited — whose 
head fell in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The execution of this 
medallion is extremely good ; the likeness — if we may 
judge from the extant portraits of Lord Russell — is very 
remarkable. The expression is lofty and distinguished, 
more nearly resembling that of the first Countess than 
that of any of her other descendants ; but there is a want 
of breadth, and the features are depressed and gloomy. 



Cheneys and the House of Russell, 333 

It is a noble face, yet a face which tells of aspirations 
and convictions unaccompanied with the force which could 
carry them out into successful action. It stands with a 
sentence of doom upon it, the central object in a group of 
sculpture which, as a whole, is affected and hysterical. A 
man so sincere and so honorable deserves a simpler me- 
morial, but it is not uncharacteristic of the pretentiousness 
and unreality which have been the drapery of the modern 
Whigs — their principles good and true in themselves, but 
made ridiculous by the extravagance of self-laudation. 

Lord Russell's wife is a beautiful figure in the story, and 
she lies by his side in the Cheneys vault. She was Rachel 
Wriothesley, daughter of Lord Southampton ; her mother 
being a De Rouvigny, one of the great Huguenot families 
in France. The tragedy of Lord Russell scarcely needs 
repeating. The Restoration was an experiment, to try 
whether the liberties of England were compatible with the 
maintenance of a dynasty which was Catholic at heart, and 
was forever leaning, as far as the times would permit, to an 
avowal of Catholic belief. Charles IT. had been obliged to 
hide his real creed, and pretend to Protestantism as a con- 
dition of his return. But the Catholic party grew daily 
stronger. Charles had no son, and the Duke of York was 
not Catholic only, but fanatically Catholic. Lord Russell 
led the opposition in Parliament. He shared to the bottom 
of his heart in the old English dread and hatred of Popery. 
He impeached Buckingham and Arlington. He believed 
to the last in the reality of the Popish plot, and he accepted 
Gates and DangerHeld as credible witnesses. He carried a 
bill prohibiting Papists from sitting in Parliament. If 
Papists could not sit in Pailiament, still less ought they to 
be on the throne, and the House of Commons, under his in- 
fluence, passed the Exclusion Bill, cutting off the Duke of 
York. Russell carried it with his own hands to the House 
of Lords, and session after session, dissolution after dissolu- 
tion, he tried to force the Lords to agree to it. No wonder 



334 Cheneys and the Rouse of Russell. 

that the Duke of York hated him, and would not spare him 
when he caught him tripping. When constitutional opposi- 
tion failed, a true Russell would have been content to wait. 
But the husband of Lady Rachel drifted into something 
which, if not treason, was curiously like it, and under the 
shadow of his example a plot was formed by ruder spirits 
to save the nation by killing both the Duke and the King. 
Lord Russell was not privy to the Rye House affair, but he 
admitted that he had taken part in a consultation for put- 
ting the country in a condition to defend its liberties by 
force, and the enemy against whom the country was to be 
on its guard was the heir to the crown. 

Martyrs may be among the best of men, but they are 
not commonly the wisest. To them their particular theo- 
ries or opinions contain everything which makes life of im- 
portance, and no formula ever conceived by man is of such 
universally comprehensive character that it must be acted 
upon at all hazards and regardless of time and opportunity. 
The enthusiast imagines that he alone has the courage of 
his convictions ; but there is a faith, and perhaps a deeper 
faith, which can stand still and wait till the fruit is ripe, 
when it can be gathered without violence. Each has its 
allotted part. The noble, generous spirit sacrifices itself 
and serves the cause by suffering. The indignation of the 
country at the execution of Sidney and Russell alienated 
England finally and fatally from the House of Stuart. Lord 
Russell and his friend were canonized as the saints of the 
Revolution, but the harvest itself was gathered by states- 
men of more common clay, yet perhaps better fitted for the 
working business of life. 

Lord Russell's trial was attended with every feature 
which could concentrate the nation's attention upon it. 
The Duke of York was the actual and scarcely concealed 
prosecutor. Lady Rachel appeared in court as her hus- 
band's secretary. It is idle to say that he was unjustly 
convicted. He was privy to a scheme for armed resistance 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 335 

to the goverument, and a government which was afraid to 
punish him ought to have abdicated. Charles Stuart had 
been brought back bj the deliberate will of the people. As 
long as he was on the throne he was entitled to defend both 
himself and his authority. Lord Russell was not, like 
Hampden, resisting an unconstitutional breach of the law. 
He was taking precautions against a danger which he an- 
ticipated, but which had not yet arisen. A government 
may be hateful, and we may admire the courage which takes 
arms against it ; but the government, while it exists, is not 
to be blamed for protecting itself with those weapons which 
the law places in its hands. 

He died beautifully. Every effort was made to save him. 
His father pleaded his own exertions in bringing about the 
Restoration. But the Duke of York was inexorable, and 
Lord Russell was executed. The Earl was consoled after 
the Revolution with a dukedom. His mother. Lady Anne, 
did not live to recover from the shock of her son's death. 
Li the midst of her wretchedness she found accidentally in 
a room in Woburn a pamphlet with an account of the Over- 
bury murder. For the first time she learnt the dreadful 
story. She was found senseless, with her hand upon the 
open page, and she never rallied from the blow. 

Lady Rachel lived far into the following century, and 
was a venerable old lady before she rejoined her husband. 
Once at least while alive Lady Rachel visited Cheneys 
Chapel. Her foot had stood on the same stones where 
mine were standing ; her eyes had rested on the same sculp- 
tured figures. 

" I have accomplished it," she wrote, " and am none the 
worse for having satisfied my longing mind, and that is a 
little ease — such desjree of it as I must look for. I had 
some business there, for that to me precious and delicious 
friend desired I would make a little monument for us, and 
I had never seen the place. I had set a day to see it with 
him not three months before he was carried thither, but 
was prevented by the boy's illness." 



336 Cheneys and the House of Russell. 

" She would make a little monument." And out of that 
modest hope of hers has grown the monstrous outrage upon 
taste and simplicity, which we may piously hope was neither 
designed nor approved by the admirable Lady Rachel. 

Lord Kussell had pressed his devotion to the cause of 
liberty beyond the law ; another Russell has been accused 
of treason to the sacred traditions of the family. Edward, 
the youngest brother of the fourth Earl Francis, who lies 
with the rest at Cheneys, had a son. who was one of the few 
Russells that were famous in arms, — the Admiral who won 
tlie battle of La Hogue, saved England from invasion, and 
was rewarded with the Earldom of Orford. Admiral Rus- 
sell, like Marlborough, notwithstanding his brilliant services, 
was beyond doubt in correspondence with the Court of St. 
Germains, and equally beyond doubt held out hopes to the 
banished King that he might desert William and carry the 
fleet along with him. The real history of these mysterious 
transactions is unknown, and, perhaps, never will be known. 
William was personally unpopular. His manner was un- 
gracious. He was guilty of the unpardonable sin of being 
a foreigner, which Englishmen could never forgive. A res- 
toration like that of Charles II. seemed at one time, at least, 
one of the chances which were on the cards ; and cautious 
politicians may not have felt that they were committing any 
serious violation of trust in learning directly from James 
the securities for rational liberty which he was ready to 
concede. The negotiation ended, however, in nothing ; and 
it is equally likely that it was intended to end in noth- 
ing. James's own opinion was that " Admiral Russell did 
but delude the King with the Prince of Orange's permis- 
sion." Jt is needless to speculate on the motives of con- 
duct, which, if we knew them, we should be unable to enter 
into. To the student who looks back over the past, the 
element of uncertainty is eliminated. When the future, 
which to the living man is contingent and dim, obscuring 
his very duties to him, has become a realized fact, no effort 



Cheneys and the House of BusselL 33T 

of imagination will enable the subsequent inquirer to place 
himself in a position where the fact was but floating possi- 
bility. The services both of Churchill and Russell might 
be held great enough to save them from the censure of 
critics, who, in their arm-chairs at a distance of two centu- 
ries, moralize on the meannesses of great men. 

The Admiral, at any rate, is not among his kindred in 
the Cheneys vault. He was buried at his own home, and 
his peerage and his lineage are extinct. 

The Dukedom has made no difference in the attitude of 
the Bedford family. A more Olympian dignity has sur- 
rounded the chiefs of the house, but they have continued, 
without exception, staunch friends of liberty ; advocates of 
the things called Reform and Progress, which have taken 
the place of the old Protestant cause; and the younger 
sons have fought gallantly, like their forefathers, in the 
front ranks of the battle. We may let the dukes glide by 
wearing the honors which democracy allows to stand, be- 
cause They are gradually ceasing to have any particular 
meaning. We pass on to the last Russell for whom the 
vault a* Cheneys has unlocked " its marble jaws ;" the old 
statesman who filled so large a place for half a century in 
English public life, whose whole existence from the time 
when he passed out of childhood was spent in sharp politi- 
cal conflict, under the eyes of the keenest party criticisms, 
and who carried his reputation off the stage at last, un- 
spotted by a single act which his biographers are called on 

to palliate. 

To the Tories, in the days of the Reform Bill, Lord 
John Russell was the tribune of an approaching violent 
revolution. To the Radicals he was the Moses who was 
leading the English nation into the promised land. The 
alarm "and the hope were alike imaginary. The wave has 
gone by, the crown and peerage and church and primo- 
geniture stand where they were, and the promised land, 
alas 1 is a land not running with corn and wine, but run- 



22 



388 Cheneys and the Rouse of Russell. 

ning only with rivers of gold, at which those who drink are 
not refreshed. To the enthusiasts of Progress the Reform 
Bill of 1832 was to be a fountain of life, in which society 
was to renew its youth like the eagle. High-born ignorance 
was to disappear from the great places of the nation ; we 
were to be ruled only by Nature's aristocracy of genius 
and virtue ; the inequalities of fortune were to be read- 
justed by a truer scale ; and merit, and merit onlj?^, was to 
be the road to employment and distinction. We need not 
quarrel with a well-meant measure because foolish hopes 
were built upon it. But experienced men say that no one 
useful thing has been done by the Reformed Parliament 
which the old Parliament would have refused to do ; and 
for the rest, it begins to be suspected that the reform of 
which we have heard so much is not the substitution of a 
wise and just government for a government which was not 
wise and just, but the abolishment of government alto- 
gether, and the leaving each individual man to follow what 
he calls his interest — a process under which the English 
people are becoming a congregation of contending atoms, 
scrambling every one of them to snatch a larger portion of 
good things than its fellow. 

It is idle to quarrel with the inevitable. Each genera- 
tion has its work to do. Old England could continue no 
longer ; and the problem for the statesmen of the first half 
of this century was to make the process of transformation 
a quiet and not a violent one. The business of Lord John 
Russell was to save us from a second edition of the French 
Revolution ; and if he thought that something higher or 
better would come of it than we have seen, or are likely to 
see, it is well that men are able to indulge in such pleasant 
illusions to make the road the lighter for them. The 
storms of his early life had long passed away before the 
end came. He remained the leader of the Liberal party in 
the House of Commons during the many years in which 
the administration was in the Liberal hands ; and he played 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 339 

his part with a prudence and good sense, of which we have 
been more conscious, perhaps, since the late absence of these 
qualities. Lord John Russell (or Earl Russell as he be- 
came) never played with his country's interests for the ad- 
vantage of his party. Calumny never whispered a suspicion 
either of his honor or his patriotism, and Tory and Radical 
alike followed him when he retired with affectionate re- 
spect. In Cheneys church there is no monument of him. 
His statue will stand appropriately in the lobby of the 
House, where he fought and won his many battles. It 
may be said of him, as was said of Peel, that we did not 
realize his worth till he was taken from us. In spite of 
progress, we have not produced another man who can make 
us forget his loss. 

Here, too, beneath the stones, lies another pair, of whom 
the world spoke much, and knew but little — Earl Russell's 
young son, who died prematurely before his father, and 
that son's still younger wife. Lord Amberley also was a 
genuine Russell, full of talent, following truth and right 
wherever they seemed to lead him ; and had life been 
allowed him he too would have left his mark on his srener- 
ation. He was carried away, it was said, into extreme 
opinions. It is no unpardonable crime. His father, too, 
in his young days, had admired Napoleon and the French 
Revolution ; had admired many things of which in age he 
formed a juster estimate. We do not augur well of the 
two-year-old colt whose paces are as sedate as those of an 
established roadster, who never rears when he is mounted, 
or flings out his heels in the overflow of heart and spirit. 
Oar age has travelled fast and far in new ways, tossing off 
traditions old as the world as if they were no better than 
worn-out rags ; and the ardent and hopeful Amberley 
galloped far in front in pursuit of what he called Liberty, 
not knowing that it was a false phantom which he was 
following ; not freedom at all, — but anarchy. The wise 
world held up its hands in horror \ a,s if any man \yas ey^r 



340 Cheneys and the Home of Russell. 

good for anything whose enthusiasm in his youth has not 
outrun his understanding. Amberley, too, would have 
learnt his lesson had time been granted him. He would 
have learnt it in the best of schools — by his own experi- 
ence. Happy those who have died young if they have left 
a name as little spotted as his with grosser faults and follies. 

She, too, his companion, went along with him in his 
philosophy of progress, each most extravagant opinion 
tempting her to play with it. True and simple in herself, 
she had been bred in disdain of unreality. Transparent 
as air, pure as the fountain which bubbles up from below 
a glacier, she was encouraged by her very innocence in 
speculations against which a nature more earthly would 
have been on its guard. She so hated insincerity that in 
mere wantonness she trampled on affectation and conven- 
tionality, and she would take up and advocate theories 
which, if put in practice, would make society impossible, 
while she seemed to me as little touched by them herself as 
the seagull's wings are wetted when it plunges into the 
waves. 

The singular ways of the two Amberleys were the world's 
wonder for a season or two. The world might as well have 
let them alone. Tlie actual arrangements of things are so 
far from excellent that young ardent minds become Radical 
by instinct when they first become acquainted with the 
world as it actually is. Radicalism is tamed into reason- 
able limits when it has battered itself for a few years against 
the stubborn bars of fact, and the conversion is the easier 
when the Radical is the heir of an earldom. The Amber- 
leys, who went farther than Lord Russell had ever done 
in the pursuit of imaginary Utopias, might have recoiled 
farther when they learnt that they were hunting after a 
dream. Peace be with them. They may dream on now, 
where the world's idle tattle can touch them no more. 

The ghostly pageant of the Russells has vanished. The 
silent hours of the summer morning are past, and the sounds 



Cheneys and the House of Russell, 341 

outside tell that the hamlet is awake and at its work. The 
quiet matron must resume the charge of the church keys, 
that intruders may not stray into the sanctuary unpermit- 
ted. In Catholic countries the church doors stand open ; 
the peasant pauses on his way to the fields for a moment of 
meditation or a few words of prayer. The kneeling figures, 
on a week day morning, are more impressive than Sunday 
rituals or preacher's homily. It was so once here in Che- 
neys, in the time of the poor priest whose figure is still on 
the wall. Was the Reformation, too, the chase of a phan- 
tom ? The freedom of the church at all events is no longer 
permitted here in Protestant England. I, too, must go 
upon my way back to the village inn, where — for such 
things have to be remembered — breakfast and a young 
companion are waiting for me. It is worth while to spend 
a day at Cheneys, if only for the breakfast — breakfast on 
fresh pink trout from the Ches, fresh eggs, fresh yellow 
butter, cream undefiled by chalk, and home-made bread un- 
touched with alum. The Russells have been the apostles 
of progress, but there is no progress in their own dominion. 
The ducal warranty is on everything which is consumed 
here. 

The sun was shining an hour ago. It is now raining ; it 
rained all yesterday; the clouds are coming up from the 
south and the wind is soft as oil. The day is still before 
us, and it is a day made for trout fishing. The chapel is 
not the only attraction at Cheneys. No river in England 
holds finer trout, nor trout more willing to be caught. Why 
fish will rise in one stream and not in another is a problem 
which we must wait to understand, as Bret Harte says, iu 
" another and a better world." The Ches at any rate is 
one of the favored waters. Great, too, is the Duke of Bed- 
ford — great in the millions he has spent on his tenants' 
cottages — great in the remission of his rents in the years 
when the seasons are unpropitious — great in the adminis- 
tration of his enormous property ; but greater than all in 



842 Cheneys and the House of Russell, 

the management of his fishing, for if he gives you leave to 
fish there, you have the stream for the day to yourself. 
You are in no danger of seeing your favorite pool already 
flogged by another sportsman, or of finding rows of figures 
before you fringing the river bank, waving their long wands 
in the air, each followed by his boy with basket and gener- 
ally useless landing net. " Competition " and " the great- 
est happiness of the greatest number " are not heard of in 
this antique domain. A day's fishing at Cheneys means a 
day by the best water in England in the fisherman's para- 
dise of solitude. 

Such a day's privilege had been extended to me if I 
cared to avail myself of it, when I was coming down to see 
the chapel, and though my sporting days were over, and 
gun and rod had long lain undisturbed in their boxes, yet 
neither the art of fly-fishing, nor the enjoyment of it when 
once acquired and tasted, will leave us except with life. 
The hand does not forget its cunning, and opportunity be- 
gets the inclination to use it. I had brought my fishing 
case along with me. Shall I stay at the inn over the day 
and try what can be done ? The rain and the prospect of 
another such breakfast decide it between them. The water- 
keeper is at the window — best of keepers — for he will ac- 
cept a sandwich perhaps for luncheon, a pull from your 
flask, and a cigar out of your case, but other fee on no con- 
dition. The rain, he tells me, lias raised the water, and the 
large fish are on the move, the May-fly has been down for 
two days. They were feeding on it last evening. If the 
sky clears they will take well in the afternoon ; but the fly 
will not show till the rain stops. 

The Cheneys fishing is divided in the middle by a mill. 
Below the mill the trout are in greatest numbers, but com- 
paratively small ; above them is a long, still deep pool where 
the huge monsters lie, and in common weather never stir 
till twilight. The keeper and 1 remember a summer even- 
ing some years ago, when at nightfall, after a burning day, 



Cheneys and the House of Russell. 343 

the glittering surface of the water was dimpled with rings, 
and a fly thrown into the middle of these circles was an- 
swered more than once by a rush and scream of the reel ; 
and a struggle which the darkness made more exciting. 
You may as well fish on the high road as in the mill-230ol 
when the sun is above the horizon, and even at night you 
will rarely succeed there ; but at the beginning of the May- 
fly season these large fish sometimes run up to the rapid 
stream at the pool head to feed. This the keeper decides 
shall be tried if the fly comes down. For the morning he 
will leave me to myself. 

Does the reader care to hear of a day's fishing in a chalk 
stream fifteen miles from London ? As music to the deaf, 
as poetry to the political economist, as a mountain land- 
scape to the London cockney, so is chalk stream trout fish- 
inor to those who never felt their finsrers tinsjle as the line 
whistles through the rings. For them I write no further ; 
let them leave the page uncut and turn on to the next 
article. 

Breakfast over, I start for the lower water. I have my 
boy with me, home for the holidays. He carries the landing 
net, and we splash through the rain to the mill. The river 
runs for a quarter of a mile down under hanging bushes. 
As with other accomplishments when once learnt, eye and 
hand do the work in fly-fishing without reference to the 
mind for orders. The eye tells the hand how distant the 
bushes are, how near the casting line approaches them. If 
a gust of wind twists it into a heap, or sweeps it towards a 
dangerous bough, the wrist does something on the instant 
which sends the fly straight and unharmed into the water. 
Practice gives our different organs functions like the in- 
stinct of animals, who do what their habits require, yet 
know not what they do. 

The small fish take freely — some go back into the water, 
the few in good condition into the basket, which, after a 
field or two, becomes perceptibly heavier. The governor. 



344 Cheneys and the House of Russell, 

a small humble bee, used to be a good fly at Cheneys, and 
so did the black alder. Neither of them is of any use to- 
day. The season has been cold and late. The March 
brown answers best, with the never - failing red -spinner. 
After running rapidly through two or three meadows, the 
river opens into a broad smooth shallow, where the trout 
are larger, and the water being extremely clear, are spe- 
cially difficult to catch. In such a place as this, it is use- 
less to throw your fly at random upon the stream. You 
must watch for a fish which is rising, and you must fish for 
him till you either catch him or disturb him. It is not 
enough to go below him and throw upwards, for tliougti he 
lies with his head up-stream, his projecting eye looks back 
over his shoulders. You must hide behind a bunch of 
rushes. You must crawl along the grass with one arm only 
raised. If the sun is shining and the shadow of your rod 
glances over the gravel, you may get up and walk away. 
No fish within siojht will stir then to the daintiest cast. 

I see a fish close to the bank on the opposite side, lazily 
lifting his head as a fly floats past him. It is a long throw, 
but the wind is fair and he is worth an effort — once, 
twice, three times I fail to reach him. The fourth I land 
the fly on the far bank, and draw it gently off upon his 
very nose. He swirls in the water like a salmon as he 
sweeps round to seize it. There is a splash — a sharp jerk, 
telling unmistakably that something has given way. A 
large fish may break you honestly in weeds or round a rock 
or stump, and only fate is to blame, but to let yourself be 
broken on the first strike is unpardonable. What can have 
happened? Alas, the red-spinner has snapped in two at the 

turn — a new fly bought last week at 's, whose boast it 

has been that no fly of his was ever known to break or bend. 

One grumbles on these occasions, for it is always the 
best fish which one loses ; and as imagination is free, one 
may call him what weight one pleases. The damage is soon 
repaired. The basket fills fast as trout follows trout. It 



Cheneys and the House of Russell, 345 

still rains, and I begin to think that I have had enough of 
it. I have promised to be at the mill at midday, and then 
we shall see. 

Evidently the sky means mischief. Black thunder-clouds 
pile up to windward, and heavy drops continue falling. But 
there is a break in the south as I walk back by the bank — 
a gleam of sunshine spans the valley with a rainbow, and 
an actual May-fly or two sails by, which I see greedily 
swallowed. The keeper is waiting ; he looks scornfully 
into my basket. Fish — did I call these herrings fish ? I 
must try the upper water at all events. The large trout 
were feeding, but the fly was not yet properly on — we can 
have our luncheon first. 

How pleasant is luncheon on mountain-side or river's 
bank, when you fling yourself down on fern or heather 
after your morning's work, and no daintiest entree had ever 
such flavor as your sandwiches, and no champagne was 
ever so exquisite as the fresh stream water just tempered 
fi'om your whisky flask. Then follows the smoke, when 
the keeper fills his pipe at your bag, and old adventures are 
talked over, and the conversation wanders on through an- 
ecdotes and experiences, till, as you listen to the shrewd 
sense and kindly feeling of your companion, you become 
aware that the steep difference which you had imagined to 
be created by education and habits of life had no existence 
save in your own conceit. Fortune is less unjust than she 
seems, and true hearts and clear-judging healthy minds are 
bred as easily in the cottage as the palace. 

But time runs on, and I must hasten to the end of my 
story. The short respite from the wet is over. Down falls 
the rain again — rain not to be measured by inches, but by 
feet ; rain such as has rarely been seen in England before 
this "asstas mirabilis" of 1879. It looks hopeless, but the 
distance by the road to the top of the water is not great. 
We complain if we are caught in a shower ; we splash 
along in a deluge, in boots and waterproof, as composedly 



346 Cheneys and the House of Russell, 

as if we were seals or otters. The river is rising, and, as 
seldom happens with a chalk stream, it is growing dis- 
colored. Every lane is running with a brown stream, 
which finds its way at last into the main channel. The 
highest point is soon reached. The first hundred yards are 
shallow, and to keep the cattle from straying a high iron rail- 
ing runs along the bank. Well I knew that iron railing. 
You must stand on the lower bar to fish over it. If you hook 
a trout you must play him from that uneasy perch in a rapid 
current among weeds and stones, and your attendant must 
use his landing net through the bars. Generally it is the 
liveliest spot in the river, but nothing can be done there to- 
day. There is a ford immediately above, into which the 
thick road-water is pouring, and the fish cannot see the fly. 
Shall we give it up? Not yet. Further down the mud 
settles a little, and by this time even the road has been 
washed clean, and less dirt comes off it. The flood stirs 
the trout into life and hunger, and their eyes, accustomed 
to the transparency of the chalk water, do not see you so 
quickly. 

Below the shallow there is a pool made by a small weir, 
over which the flood is now rushing ; on one side there is 
an open hatchway, with the stream pouring through. The 
banks are bushy, and over the deepest part of the pool the 
stem of a large ash projects into the river. Yesterday, when 
the water was lower, the keeper saw a four-pounder lying 
under that stem. Between the weir and the trees it is an 
awkward spot, but difficulty is the charm of fly-fishing. The 
dangerous drop fly must be taken off ; a drop fly is only fit 
for open water, where there is neither weed nor stump. 
The March brown is sent skimming at the tail of the cast- 
ing line, to be dropped, if possible, just above the ash, and 
to be carried under it by the stream. It has been caught in 
a root, so it seems ; or it is foul somewhere. Surely no 
fish ever gave so dead a pull. No ; it is no root. The line 
shoots under the bank. There is a broad flash of white just 



Cheneys and the Rouse of Russell. 347 

below the surface, a moment's struggle, the rod springs 
straiofht, and the line comes back unbroken. The March 
brown is still floating at the end of it. It was a big fish, 
perhaps the keeper's very big one ; he must have beea 
lightly hooked, and have rubbed the fly out of his mouth. 
But let us look closer. The red-spinner had played false 
in the morning ; ma}^ not something like it have befallen 
the March brown ? Something like it, indeed. The hook 
has straightened out as if, instead of steel, it had beeu 
made of copper. A pretty business ! I try another, and 
another, with the same result. The heavy trout take them, 

and one bends and the next breaks. Oh ! — ! Well 

for Charles Kingsley that he was gone before he heard of a 
treason which would have broken his trust in man. You, 
in whose praise I have heard him so often eloquent! You 
who never dealt in shoddy goods. You who were faithful 
if all else were faithless, and redeemed the credit of 
Eno-lish tradesmen ! You had not then been in the school 
of progress and learnt that it was the buyer's business to 
distinguish good from bad. You never furnished your 
customers with cheap and nasty wares, fair looking to the 
eye and worthless to the touch and trial. In those days 
you dealt with gentlemen, and you felt and traded like a 
gentleman yourself. And now you, too, have gone the 
way of your fellows. You are making a fortune, as you 
call it, out of the reputation which you won honorably in 
better days. You have given yourself over to competition 
and semblance. You have entered for the race among the 
sharpers and will win by knavery and tricks like the rest. 
I will not name you for the sake of the old times, when 
C. K. and I could send you a description of a fly from the 
furthest corner of Ireland, and by return of post would 
come a packet tied on hooks which Kendal and Limerick 
might equal, but could not excel. You may live on un- 
denounced for me ; but read C. K.'s books over again ; re- 
pent of your sins, go back to honest ways, and renounce 



348 Cheneys and the House of Russell, 

the new gospel, in which whosoever believes shall not be 
saved. 

But what is to be done ? Spite of the rain the river is 
.now covered with drowned May-flies, and the trout are 
taking them all round. I have new May-flies from the 
same quarter in my book, but it will be mere vexation to 
try them. Luckily for me there are a few old ones sur- 
viving from other days. The gut is brown with age — but 
I must venture it. If this breaks I will go home, lock 
away my rod, and write an essay on the effects of the sub- 
stitution of Political Economy for the Christian faith. 

On, then, goes one of these old flies. It looks well. It 
bears a mild strain, and, like Don Quixote with his helmet, 
I will not put it to a severe trial. Out it shoots over the 
pool, so natural-looking that T cannot distinguish it from a 
real fly which floats at its side. I cannot, nor can that 
laro^e trout in the smooth water above the fall. He takes 
it, springs into the air, and then darts at the weir to throw 
himself over. If he goes down he is lost. Hold on. He 
has the stream to help him, and not an inch of line can be 
spared. The rod bends double, but the old gut is true. 
Down the fall he is not to go. He turns up the pool, he 
makes a dart for the hatchway, — but if you can stand a 
trout's first rush you need not fear him in fair water after- 
wards. A few more efforts and he is in the net and on the 
bank, not the keeper's four-pounder, but a handsome fish 
which I know that he will approve. 

He had walked down the bank pensively while I was in 
the difficulty with my flies, m.editating, perhaps, on idle 
gentlemen, and reflecting that if the tradesmen were knaves 
the gentlemen were correspondingly fools. He called to 
me to come to him just as I had landed my trout. He was 
standing by the side of the rapid stream at the head of the 
mill pool. It was as he had foretold ; the great fish had 
come up, and were rolling like salmon on the top of the 
water, gulping down the May-flies. Even when they are 



Cheneys and the House of Russell, 349 

thus carelessly ravenous, the clearness of the river creates 
a certain difficulty in catching them in ordinary times, but 
to-day the flood made caution superfluous. They were 
splashing on the surface close to our feet, rolling about in 
a negligent gluttony which seemed to take from them every 
thought of danger, for a distance of at least three hundred 
yards. 

There was no longer any alarm for the tackle and it was 
but to throw the fly upon the river, near or far, for a trout 
instantly to seize it. There was no shy rising where sus- 
picion balks the appetite. The fish were swallowing with 
a deliberate seriousness every fly which drifted within their 
reach, snapping their jaws upon it with a gulp of satisfac- 
tion. The only difficulty was in playing them when 
hooked with a delicate chalk-stream casting-line. For an 
hour and a half it lasted, such an hour and a half of trout 
fishino- as I had never seen and shall never see asfain. The 
ease of success at last became wearisome. Two large 
baskets were filled to the brim. Accident had thrown in 
my way a singular opportunity which it would have been 
wrong to abuse, so I decided to stop. We emptied out our 
spoils upon the grass, and the old keeper said that long as 
he had known the river he had never but once seen so 
many fish of so large size taken in the Ches in a single day 
by a single rod. 

How can a reasonable creature find pleasure in having 
performed such an exploit? If trout were wanted for 
human food, a net would have answered the purpose with 
less trouble to the man and less annoyance to the fish. 
Throughout creation man is the only animal — man, and 
the dogs and cats which have learnt from him — who kills, 
for the sake of killing, what he does not want, and calls it 
sport. All other animals seize their prey only when hun- 
gry, and are satisfied when tlieir hunger is appeased. 

Such, it can only be answered, is man's disposition. He 
is a curiously formed creatuie, and the appetite for sport 



350 Oheneys and the House of Russell. 

does not seem to disappear with civilization. The savage 
in his natural state hunts, as the animals hunt, to support 
his life ; the sense of sport is strongest in the elaborately 
educated and civilized. It may be that the taste will die 
out before " Progress." Our descendants perhaps, a few 
generations hence, may look back upon a pheasant battue 
as we look back on bear-baiting and bull-fighting, and our 
mild offspring, instructed in the theory of development, 
may see a proof in their fathers' habits that they come of a 
race who were once crueller than tigers, and will congratu- 
late themselves on the change. So they will think, if they 
judge us as we judge our forefathers of the days of the 
Plantagenets and Tudors, and both we and they may be 
perhaps mistaken. Half the lives of men in mediaeval 
Europe was spent in fighting. Yet from mediaeval Europe 
came the knightly graces of courtesy and chivalry. The 
modern soldier, wliose trade is war, yet hates and dreads 
war more than civilians dread it. The sportsman's knowl- 
edge of the habits of animals gives him a kindly feeling 
towards them notwithstanding, and sporting tends rather to 
their preservation than their destruction. The human race 
may become at last vegetarians and water-drinkers. Astrsea 
may come back, and man may cease to take the life of 
bird, or beast, or fish. But the lion wil] not lie down with 
the lamb, for lambs and lions will no longer be ; the eagle 
will not feed beside the dove, for doves will not be allowed 
to consume grain which might have served as human food, 
and will be extinct as the dodo. It may be all right and 
fit and proper : a world of harmless vegetarians may be the 
appropriate outcome of the development of humanity. But 
we who have been born in a ruder age do not aspire to rise 
beyond tlie level of our own times. We have toiled, we 
have suffered, we have enjoyed, as the nature which we 
have received has prompted us. We blame our fathers' 
habits ; our children may blame ours in turn ; yet we may 
be sitting in judgment, both of us, on matters of which we 
know nothing. 



Cheneys and the House of Russell, 351 

The storm has passed away, the dripping trees are spark- 
ling in the warm and watery sunset. Back, then, to our 
inn, where dinner waits for us, the choicest of our own 
trout, pink as salmon, with the milky curd in them, and no 
sauce to spoil the delicacy of their flavor. Then bed, with 
its lavender-scented sheets and white curtains, and sleep, 
sound sweet sleep, that loves the country village and comes 
not near a London bedroom. In the morning, adieu to 
Cheneys, with its red gable-ends and chimneys, its venera- 
ble trees, its old-world manners, and the solemn memories 
of its mausoleum. Adieu, too, to the river, which, " though 
men may come and men may go," has flowed and will flow 
on for ever, winding among its reed beds, murmuring over 
its gravelly fords, heedless of royal dynasties, uncaring 
whether Cheney or Russell calls himself lord of it waters, 
graciously turning the pleasant corn mills in its course, un- 
polluted by the fetid refuse of manufactures, and travelling 
on to the ocean bright and pure and uncharged with poison, 
as in the old times when the priest sung mass in the church 
upon the hill, and the sweet, soft matins bell woke the 
hamlet to its morning prayers. 



A SIDING AT A RAILWAY STATION. 

FRAZER'S MAGAZINE. 1879. 

» 

Some years ago I was travelling by railway, no matter 
whence or whither. I was in a second-class carriage. We 
had been long on the road, and had still some distance 
before us, when one evening our journey was brought un- 
expectedly to an end by the train running into a siding. 
The guards opened the doors, we were told that we could 
proceed no further, and were required to alight. The 
passengers were numerous, and of all ranks and sorts. 
There were third class, second, first, with saloon carriages 
for several great persons of high distinction. We had 
ministers of state, judges on circuit, directors, leading men 
of business, idle young men of family who were out amus- 
ing themselves, an archbishop, several ladies, and a duke 
and duchess with their suite. These favored travellers 
had Pullman cars to themselves and occupied as much room 
as was allotted to scores of plebeians. I had amused my- 
self for several days in observing the luxurious appurte- 
nances by which they were protected against discomfort — 
the piles of cushions and cloaks, the baskets of dainties, the 
novels and magazines to pass away the time, and the pro- 
found attention which they met with from the conductors 
and station-masters on the line. The rest of us were a 
miscellaneous crowd — commercial people, lawyers, artists, 
men of letters, tourists moving about for pleasure or be- 
cause they had nothing to do ; and in the third-class car- 
riages, artisans and laborers in search of work, women look- 
ing for husbands or for service, or beggars flying from 
starvation in one part of the world to find it follow them 



A Siding at a Railway Station. 353 

like their shadows, let them go where they pleased. All 
these were huddled together, feeding hardly on such poor 
provisions as they carried with them or could pick up at the 
stopping-places. No more consideration was shown them 
than if they had been so many cattle. But they were 
merry enough: songs and sounds of laughter came from 
their windows, and notwithstanding all their conveniences, 
the languid-looking fine people in the large compartments 
seemed to me to get through their journey with less enjoy- 
ment after all than their poor fellow-travellers. These last 
appeared to be of tougher texture, to care less for being 
jolted and shaken, to be better-humored and kinder to one 
another. They had found life go hard with them wherever 
they had been, and not being accustomed to have every- 
thing which they wished for, they were less selfish and more 
considerate. 

The intimation that our journey was for the present at 
an end came on most of us as an unpleasant surprise. The 
grandees got out in a high state of indignation. They 
called for their servants, but their servants did not hear 
them, or laughed and passed on. The conductors had for- 
gotten to be obsequious. All classes on the platform were 
suddenly on a level. A beggar-woman hustled the duchess 
as she was standing astonished because her maid had left 
her to carry her own bag. The patricians were pushed 
about among the crowd with no more concern than if they 
had been common mortals. They demanded loudly to see 
the station-master. The minister complained angrily of the 
delay ; an important negotiation would be imperilled by his 
detention, and he threatened the company with the dis- 
pleasure of his department. A consequential youth who 
had just heard of the death of his elder brother was flying 
home to take his inheritance. A great lady had secured, as 
she had hoped, a brilliant match for her daughter; her work 
^ over, she had been at the baths to recover from the dissipa- 
^tion of the season; difficulty had risen unlocked for, and 

23 



354 A Siding at a Railway Station, 

unless she was at hand to remove it, the worst consequences 
might be feared. A banker declared that the credit of a 
leading commercial house might fail unless he could be at 
home on the day fixed for his return : he alone could save 
it. A solicitor had the evidence in his portmanteau which 
would determine the succession to the lands and title of 
an ancient family. An elderly gentleman was in despair 
about his young wife whom he had left at home ; he had 
made a will by which she was to lose his fortune if she 
married again after his death, but the will was lying in his 
desk unsigned. The archbishop was on his way to a synod 
where the great question was to be discussed whether gas 
might be used at the altar instead of candles. The altar 
candles were blessed before they were used, and the doubt 
was whether gas could be blessed. The right reverend prel- 
ate conceived that if the gas tubes were made in the shape 
of candles the difficulty could be got over, but he feared 
that without his moderating influence the majority might 
come to a rash decision. All these persons were clamoring 
over their various anxieties with the most naive frankness, 
the truth coming freely out, whatever it might be. One 
distinguished looking lady in deep mourning, with a sad 
gentle face, alone was resigned and hopeful. It seemed 
that her husband had been stopped not long before at the 
same station. She thought it possible that she might meet 
him again. 

The station-master listened to the complaints with com- 
posed indifference. He told the loudest that they need not 
alarm themselves. The State would survive the absence 
of the minister. The minister, in fact, was not thinking 
of the State at all, but of the party triumph which he ex- 
pected ; and the peerage which was to be his reward, the 
station-master said would now be of no use to him. The 
youth had a second brother who would succeed instead of 
him, and the tenants would not be inconvenienced by the 
change. The fine lady's daughter would marry to her own 



A Siding at a Railway Station. 355 

liking instead of her mother's, and would be all the happier 
for it. The commercial house was already insolvent, and 
the longer it lasted the more innocent people would be 
ruined by it. The boy whom the lawyer intended to make 
into a rich baronet was now working industriously at school, 
and would grow up a useful man. If a great estate fell in 
to him he would be idle and dissolute. The old man might 
congratulate himself that he had escaped so soon from the 
scrape into which he had fallen. His wife would marry an 
adventurer, and would suffer worse from inheriting his 
fortune. The archbishop was commended for his anxiety. 
His solution of the candle problem was no doubt an excel- 
lent one ; but his clergy were now provided with a harm- 
less subject to quarrel over, and if it was adopted they 
might fall out over something else which might be seriously 
mischievous. 

" Do you mean, then, that you are not going to send us 
forward at all ? " the minister inquired sternly. 

" You will see," the station-master answered with a curi- 
ous short laugh. I observed that he looked more gently at 
the lady in mourning. She had said nothing, but he knew 
what was in her mind, and though he held out no hope in 
words that her wish would be gratified, he smiled sadly, and 
the irony passed out of his face. 

The crowd, meanwhile, were standing about the platform 
whistling tunes or amusing themselves, not ill-naturedly, at 
the distress of their grand companions. Something con- 
siderable was happening. But they had so long experienced 
the ups and downs of things that they were prepared for 
what fortune might send. They had not expected to find a 
Paradise where they were going, and one place might be as 
good as another. They had nothing belonging to them ex- 
cept the clothes they stood in and their bits of skill in their 
different trades. Wherever men were, there would be need 
of cobblers and tailors, and smiths and carpenters. If not, 
they might fall on their feet somehow if there was work to 
be done of any sort. 



356 A Siding at a Railway Station, 

Presently a bell rang, a door was flung open, and we 
were ordered into a waiting-room, where we were told that 
our luggage was to be examined. It was a large, barely 
furnished apartment, like the salle d'attente at the Northern 
Railway Station at Paris. A rail ran across, behind which 
we were all penned ; opposite to us was the usual long table, 
on which were piled boxes, bags, and portmanteaus, and be- 
hind them stood a row of officials, in a plain uniform with 
gold bands round their caps, and the dry peremptory man- 
ner which passengers accustomed to deference so particu- 
larly dislike. At their backs was a screen extending across 
the room, reaching half way to the ceiling ; in the rear of 
it there was apparently an office. 

We each looked to see that our particular belongings were 
safe, but we were surprised to find that we could recognize 
none of them. Packages there were in plenty, alleged to 
be the property of the passengers who had come in by the 
train. They were arranged in the three classes — first, sec- 
ond, and third — but the proportions were inverted : most 
of it was labelled as the luggage of the travellers in fustian, 
who had brought nothing with them but what they carried 
in their hands ; a moderate heap stood where the second- 
class luggage should have been, and some of superior qual- 
ity, but none of us could make out the shapes of our own 
trunks. As to the grand ladies and gentlemen, the innu- 
merable articles which I had seen put as theirs into the van 
were nowhere to be found. A few shawls and cloaks lay 
upon the planks, and that was all. There was a loud out- 
cry, but the officials were accustomed to it, and took no 
notice. The station-master, who was still in charge of us, 
said briefly that the saloon luggage would be sent forward 
in the next train. The late owners would have no more 
use for it, and it would be delivered to their friends. 

The late owners ! Were we no longer actual owners, 
then ? My individual loss was not great, and, besides, it 
might be made up to me, for I saw my name on a strange 



A Siding at a Railway Station, 357 

box on the table, and being of curious disposition, the sin- 
gularity of the adventure made it interesting to me. The 
consternation of the rest was indescribable. The minister 
supposed that he had fallen among Communists, who disbe- 
lieved in property, and was beginning a speech on the ele- 
mentary conditions of society, when silence was called, and 
the third-class passengers were ordered to advance, that 
their boxes might be opened. Each man had his own care- 
fully docketed. The lids flew off, and within, instead of 
clothes and shoes and dressing apparatus and money and 
jewels and such like, were simply samples of the work 
which he had done in his life. There was an account-book, 
also, in which was entered the number of days which he 
had worked, the number and size of the fields, etc., which 
he had drained and enclosed and ploughed, the crops which 
he had reaped, the walls which he had built, the metal 
which he had dug out and smelted and fashioned into arti- 
cles of use to mankind, the leather which he had tanned, 
the clothes which he had woven — all entered with punctual 
exactness ; and on the opposite page, the wages which he 
had received, and the share which had been allotted to him 
of the good things which he had helped to create. 

Besides his work, so specifically called, there were his 
actions — his affection for his parents, or his wife and chil- 
dren, his self-denials, his charities, his purity, his truth, his 
honesty, or, it might be, ugly catalogues of sins and oaths 
and drunkenness and brutality. But inquiry into action 
was reserved for a second investigation before a higher 
commissioner. The first examination was confined to the 
literal work done by each man for the general good — how 
much he had contributed, and how much society had done 
for him in return ; and no one, it seemed, could be allowed 
to go any further without a certificate of having passed this 
test satisfactorily. With the workmen, the balance in most 
instances was found enormously in their favor. The state 
of the case was so clear that the scrutiny was rapidly got 



358 A Siding at a Hailway Station, 

over, and they and their luggage were passed in to the 
higher court. A few were found whose boxes were empty, 
who had done nothing useful all their lives, and had sub- 
sisted by begging and stealing. These were ordered to 
stand aside till the rest of us had been disposed of. 

The saloon passengers were taken next. Most of them, 
who had nothing at all to show, were called up together, 
and were asked what they had to say for themselves. A 
well-dressed gentleman, who spoke for the rest, said that 
the whole investigation was a mystery to him. He and his 
friends had been born to good fortunes, and had found 
themselves, on entering upon life, amply provided for. 
They had never been told that work was required of them, 
either work with their hands or work with their heads — in 
fact, work of any kind. It was right, of course, for the 
poor to work, because they could not honestly live other- 
wise. For themselves, they had spent their time in amuse- 
ments, generally innocent. They had paid for everything 
which they had consumed. They had stolen nothing, taken 
nothing from any man by violence or fraud. They had 
kept the commandments, all ten of them, from the time 
when they were old enough to understand them. The 
speaker, at least, declared that he had no breach of any 
commandment on his own conscience, and he believed he 
might say as much of his companions. They were superior 
people, who had been always looked up to and well spoken 
of, and to call upon them to show what they had done was 
against reason and equity. 

" Gentlemen," said the chief official, " we have heard this 
many times ; yet as often as it is repeated we feel fresh 
astonishment. You have been in a world where work is 
the condition of life. Not a meal can be had by any man 
that some one has not worked to produce. Those who 
work deserve to eat ; those who do not work deserve to 
starve. There are but three ways of living : by working, 
by stealing, or by begging. Those who have not lived by 



A Siding at a Railway Station. 359 

the first have lived by one of the other two. And no mat- 
ter how superior you think yourselves, you will not pass 
here till you have something of your own to produce. You 
have had your wages beforehand — ample wages, as you 
acknowledge yourselves. What have you to show ? " 

" Wages ! " the speaker said. " We are not hired ser- 
vants ; we received no wages. What we spent was our 
own. All the orders we received were that we were not 
to do wrong. We have done no wrong. I appeal to the 
higher court." 

But the appeal could not be received. To all who pre- 
sented themselves with empty boxes, no matter who they 
were, or how excellent their characters appeared to one an- 
other, there was the irrevocable answer, " No admittance, 
, till you come better furnished." All who were in this con- 
dition, the duke and duchess among them, were ordered to 
stand aside with the thieves. The duchess declared that 
she had given the finest parties in the season, and as it was 
universally agreed that they had been the most tedious, and 
that no one had found any pleasure there, a momentary 
doubt rose whether they might not have answered some 
useful purpose in disgusting people with such modes of en- 
tertainment ; but no evidence of this was forthcoming : the 
world had attended them because the world had nothing 
else to do ; and she and her guests had been alike unprofit- 
able. Thus the large majority of the saloon passengers was 
disposed of. The minister, the archbishop, the lawyer, the 
banker, and others, who, although they had no material 
work credited to them, had yet been active and laborious in 
their different callings, were passed to the superior judges. 

Our turn came next, — ours of the second class, — and a 
motley gathering we were. Busy we must all have been, 
from the multitude of articles which we found assigned to 
us. Manufacturers with their wares, solicitors with their 
lawsuits, doctors and clergymen with the bodies and souls 
which they had saved or lost, authors with their books. 



360 A Siding at a Railway Station, 

painters and sculptors with their pictures and statues. But 
the hard test was applied to all that we had produced, — the 
wages which we had received on one side, and the value of 
our exertions to mankind on the other, — and imposing as 
our performances looked when laid out to be examined, we 
had been paid, most of us, out of all proportion to what we 
were found to have deserved. I was reminded of a large 
compartment in the Paris Exhibition, where an active gen- 
tleman, wishing to show the state of English literature, had 
collected copies of every book, review, pamphlet, or news- 
paper which had been published in a single year. The 
bulk was overwhelming, but the figures were only decimal 
points, and the worth of the whole was a fraction above 
zero. A few of us were turned back summarily among 
the thieves and the fine gentlemen and ladies : speculators 
who had done nothing but handle money which had clung 
to their fingers in passing through them, divines who had 
preached a morality which they did not practise, and fluent 
orators who had made speeches which they knew to be non- 
sense, philosophers who had spun out of moonshine systems 
of the universe, distinguished pleaders who had defeated 
justice while they established points of law, writers of 
books upon subjects of which they knew enough to mis- 
lead their readers, purveyors of luxuries which had added 
nothing to human health or strength, physicians and 
apothecaries who had pretended to knowledge which they 
knew that they did not possess, — these all, as the contents 
of their boxes bore witness against them, were thrust back 
into the rejected herd. 

There were some whose account stood better as having 
at least produced something of real merit, but they were 
cast on the point of wages ; modest excellence had come 
badly off ; the plausible and unscrupulous had thriven and 
grown rich. It was tragical, and evidently a surprise to 
most of us, to see how mendacious we had been : how we 
had sanded our sugar, watered our milk, scamped our car- 



A Siding at a Railway Station. 361 

pentering and mason's work, literally and metaphorically ; 
how in all things we had been thinking less of producing 
good work than of the profit which we could make out of 
it; how we had sold ourselves to tell lies and act them, 
because the public found lies pleasant and truth expensive 
and troublesome. Some of us were manifest rogues, who 
had bought cheap and sold dear, had used false measures 
and weights, had made cotton pass for wool, and hemp for 
silk, and tin for silver. The American pedlar happened to 
be in the party who had put a rind upon a grindstone and 
had sold it as a cheese. These were jiromptly sifted out 
and placed with their fellows ; only persons whose services 
were on the whole greater than the pay which they had re- 
ceived were allowed their certificates. When my own box 
was opened, I perceived that though the wages had been 
small the work done seemed smaller still, and I was sur- 
prised to find myself among those who had passed. 

The whistle of a train was heard at this moment coming 
in upon the main line. It was to go on in half an hour, 
and those who had been turned back were told that they 
were to proceed by it to the place where they had been 
originally going. They looked infinitely relieved at the 
news ; but, before they started, a few questions had to be 
put to them, and a few alterations made which were to 
affect their future. They were asked to explain how they 
had come to be such worthless creatures. They gave many 
answers, which came mainly to the same thing. Circum- 
stances had been against them. It was all owing to cir- 
cumstances. They had been badly brought up. They had 
been placed in situations where it had been impossible for 
them to do better. The rich people repeated that they had 
never been informed that any work was expected of them. 
Their wants had all be^n provided for, and it was unfair to 
expect that they should have exerted themselves of their 
own accord when they had no motive for working. If they 
had only been born poor all would have gone well with 



362 A Siding at a Railway Station. 

them. The cheating tradesman declared that the first duty 
of a shopkeeper, according to all received principles, was 
to make money and better his condition. It was the 
buyer's business to see to the quality of the articles which 
he purchased ; the shopkeeper was entitled to sell his wares 
at the highest price which he could get for them. So, at 
least, it was believed and taught by the recognized authori- 
ties on the subject. The orators, preachers, newspaper 
writers, novel-writers, etc., etc., of whom there were a great 
many, appealed to the crowds who came to listen to them, 
or bought and read their productions. Tout le 7nonde, it 
was said, was wiser than the wisest single sage. They had 
given the world what the world wished for and approved ; 
they had worked at supplying it with all their might, and 
it was extremely hard to blame them for guiding them- 
selves by the world's judgment. The thieves and vaga- 
bonds argued that they had been brought into existence 
without their consent being asked : they had not wished for 
it ; although they had not been without their pleasures, 
they regarded existence on the whole as a nuisance which 
they would gladly have been spared. Being alive, how- 
ever, they had to keep alive ; and for all that they could 
see, they had as full a right to the good things which the 
world contained as anybody else, provided they could get 
them. They were called thieves. Law and language were 
made by the property owners, who were their natural 
enemies. If society had given them the means of living 
honestly they would have found it easy to be honest. 
Society had done nothing for them — why should they do 
anything for society ? 

So, in their various ways, those who had been " plucked '* 
defended themselves. They were all delighted to hear that 
they were to have another chance ; and I was amused to 
observe that though some of them had pretended that 
they had not wished to be born, and had rather not have 
been born, not one of them protested against being sent 



A Siding at a Railway Station, 363 

back. All they asked was that they should be put in a 
new position, and that the adverse influences should be 
taken off. I expected that among these adverse influences 
they would have mentioned the faults of their own dis- 
positions. My own opinion had been that half the mis- 
doings of men came from congenital defects of character 
which they had brought with them into the world, and 
that constitutional courage, right-mindedness, and practical 
ability were as much gifts of nature or circumstance as the 
accidents of fortune. A change in this respect was of 
more consequence than in any other. But with themselves 
they were all apparently satisfied, and they required only 
an improvement in their surroundings. The alterations 
were rapidly made. The duchess was sent to begin her 
life again in a laborer's cottage. She was to attend the 
village school, and rise thence into a housemaid. The fine 
gentleman was made a ploughboy. The authors and 
preachers were to become mechanics, and bound appren- 
tices to carpenters and blacksmiths. A philosopher, who, 
having had a good fortune and unbroken health, had in- 
sisted that the world was as good as it could be made, was 
to be born blind and paralytic, and to find his way through 
life under the new conditions. The thieves and cheats, 
who pretended that their misdemeanors were due to pov- 
erty, were to find themselves, when they arrived in the 
world again, in palaces surrounded with luxury. The cup 
of Lethe was sent round. The past became a blank. They 
were hurried into the train ; the engine screamed and flew 
away with them. 

*' They will be all here again in a few years," the station- 
master said, " and it will be the same story over again. I 
have had these very people in my hands a dozen times. 
They have been tried in all positions, and there is still 
nothing to show, and nothing but complaints of circum- 
stances. For my part, I would put them out altogether." 
" How long is it to last ? " I asked. " Well," he said, " it 



364 A Siding at a Railway Station, 

does not depend on me. No one passes here who cannot 
prove that he has lived to some purpose. Some of the 
worst I have known made at last into pigs and geese, to be 
fatted up and eaten, and made of use in that way. Others 
have become asses, condemned to carry burdens, to be beaten 
with sticks, and to breed asses like themselves for a hundred 
generations. All animated creatures tend to take the shape 
at last which suits their character." 

The train was scarcely out of sight when again the bell 
rang. The scene changed as at a theatre. The screen was 
rolled back, and we who were left found ourselves in the 
presence of four grave-looking persons, like the board of ex- 
aminers whom we remembered at college. We were called 
up one by one. The work which had passed the first ordeal 
was again looked into, and the quality of it compared with 
the talent or faculty of the producer, to see how far he had 
done his best ; whether anywhere he had done worse than 
he might have done and knew how to have done ; while 
besides, in a separate collection, were the vices, the sins, 
the selfishnesses and ill-humors, with, in the other scale, the 
acts of personal duty, of love and kindness and charity, 
which had increased the happiness or lightened the sorrows 
of those connected with him. These last, I observed, had 
generally been forgotten by the owner, who saw them ap- 
pear with surprise, and even repudiated them with protest. 
In the work, of course, both material and moral, there was 
every gradation, both of kind and merit. But while noth- 
ing was absolutely worthless, everything, even the highest 
achievements of the greatest artist or the greatest saint, fell 
short of absolute perfection. Each of us saw our own per- 
formances, from our first ignorant beginnings to what we 
regarded as our greatest triumph ; and it was easy to trace 
how much of our faults were due to natural deficiencies and 
the necessary failures of inexperience, and how much to 
self-will or vanity or idleness. Some taint of mean mo- 
tives, too, some desire of reward, desire of praise or honor 



A Siding at a Railway Station. 365 

or wealth, some foolish self-satisfaction, when satisfaction 
ought not to have been felt, was to be seen infecting every- 
thing, even the very best which was presented for scrutiny. 

So plain was this that one of us, an earnest, impressive- 
looking person, whose own work bore inspection better than 
that of most of us, exclaimed passionately that, so far as 
he was concerned, the examiners might spare their labor. 
From his earliest years he had known what he ought to do, 
and in no instance had he ever completely done it. He had 
struggled; he had conquered his grosser faults; but the 
farther he had gone, and the better he had been able to do, 
his knowledge had still grown faster than his power of act- 
ing upon it ; and every additional day that he had lived his 
shortcomings had become more miserably plain to him. 
Even if he could have reached perfection at last, he could 
not undo the past, and the faults of his youth would bear wit- 
ness against him and call for his condemnation. Therefore, 
he said, he abhorred himself. He had no merit which could 
entitle him to look for favor. He had labored on to the 
end, but he had labored with a full knowledge that the best 
which he could offer would be unworthy of acceptance. He 
had been told, and he believed, that a high spirit, not sub- 
ject to infirmity, had done his work for him, and done it 
perfectly, and that if he abandoned all claim on his own ac- 
count he might be accepted for the sake of what another 
had done. This, he trusted, was true, and it was his sole 
dependence. In the so-called good actions with which he 
seemed to be credited, there was nothing that was really 
good ; there was not one which was altogether what it 
ought to have been. 

He was evidently sincere, and what he said was undoubt- 
edly true — true of him and true of every one. Even in 
the vehemence of his self-abandonment a trace lingered of 
the taint which he was confessing, for he was a polemical 
divine ; he had spent his life and gained a reputation in 
maintaining this particular doctrine. He believed it, but he 
had not forgotten that he had been himself its champion. 



366 A Siding at a Railway Station, 

The examiner looked kindly at him ; but answered, " We 
do not expect impossibilities ; and we do not blame you 
when you have not accomplished what is beyond your 
strength. Only those who are themselves perfect can do 
anything perfectly. Human beings are born ignorant and 
helpless. They bring into the world with them a disposi- 
tion to seek what is pleasant to themselves, and what is 
pleasant is not always right. They learn to live as they 
learn everything else. At first they cannot do rightly at 
all. They improve under teaching and practice. The best 
only arrive at excellence. We do not find fault with the 
painter on account of his first bad copies, if they were as 
good as could be looked for at his age. Every craftsman 
acquires his art by degrees. He begins badly ; he cannot 
help it ; and it is the same with life. You learn to walk 
by falling down. You learn to live by going wrong and 
experiencing the consequences of it. We do not record 
against a man ' the sins of his youth ' if he has been hon- 
estly trying to improve himself. We do not require the 
same self-control in a child as in a man. We do not re- 
quire the same attainments from all. Some are well taught, 
some are ill taught, some are not taught at all. Some have 
naturally good dispositions, some have naturally bad dis- 
positions. Not one has had power ' to fulfil the law,' as 
you call it, completely. Therefore, it is no crime in him if 
he fails. We reckon as faults those only which arise from 
idleness, wilfulness, selfishness, and deliberate preference of 
evil to good. Each is judged according to what he has re- 
ceived." 

I was amused to observe how pleased the archbishop 
looked while the examiner was speaking. He had himself 
been engaged in controversy with this gentleman on the 
share of " good works " in justifying a man, and if the ex- 
aminer had not taken his side in the discussion he had at 
least demolished his adversary. The archbishop had been 
the more disinterested in the line which he had taken, as 



A Siding at a Railway Station, 367 

his own " works," though in several large folios, weighed 
extremely little ; and, indeed, had it not been for passages 
in his early life — he had starved himself at college that 
he might not be a burden upon his widowed mother — I do 
not know but that he might have been sent back into the 
world to serve as a parish clerk. 

For myself, there were questions which I was longing 
to ask, and I was trying to collect my courage to speak. I 
wanted chiefly to know what the examiner meant by " natu- 
ral disposition." Was it that a man might be born with a 
natural capacity for becoming a saint, as another man with 
a capacity to become a great artist or musician, and that 
each of us could only grow to the limits of his natural 
powers? And, again, were idleness, wilfulness, selfishness, 
etc., etc., natural dispositions ? — for in that case — 

But at the moment the bell rang again, and my own 
name was called. There was no occasion to ask who I was. 
In every instance the identity of the person, his history, 
small or large, and all that he had said or done, was placed 
before the court so clearly that there was no need for ex- 
torting a confession. There stood the catalogue inexorably 
impartial, the bad actions in a schedule painfully large, the 
few good actions veined with personal motives which spoilt 
the best of them. In the way of work there was nothing 
to be shown but certain books and other writings, and these 
were spread out to be tested. A fluid was poured on the 
pages, the effect of which was to obliterate entirely every 
untrue proposition, and to make every partially true prop- 
osition grow faint in proportion to the false element 
which entered into it. Alas ! chapter after chapter vanished 
away, leaving the paper clean, as if no compositor had ever 
labored in setting type for it. Pale and illegible became 
the fine-sounding paragraphs on which I had secretly prided 
myself. A few passages, however, survived here and there 
at long intervals. They were those on which I had labored 
least, and had almost forgotten, or those, as I observed in 



868 A Siding at a Railway Station, 

one or two instances, which had been selected for special 
reprobation in the weekly journals. Something stood to 
my credit, and the worst charge of wilfully and intention- 
ally setting down what I did not believe to be true was not 
alleged against me. Ignorance, prejudice, carelessness ; 
sins of infirmity — culpable indeed, but not culpable in the 
last degree ; the water in the ink, the commonplaces, the 
ineffectual sentiments : these, to my unspeakable comfort, I 
perceived were my heaviest crimes. Had I been accused of 
absolute worthlessness, I should have pleaded guilty in the 
state of humiliation to which I was reduced ; but things 
were better than they might have been. I was flattering 
myself that when it came to the wages question, the balance 
would be in my favor : so many years of labor — such and 
such cheques received from my publisher. Here, at least, 
I held myself safe, and I was in good hope that I might 
scrape through. The examiner was good-natured in his 
manner. A reviewer who had been listening for my con- 
demnation was beginning to look disgusted, when suddenly 
one of the walls of the court became transparent, and there 
appeared an interminable vista of creatures — creatures of 
all kinds from land and water, reaching away into the ex- 
treme distance. They were those which in the course of 
my life I had devoured, either in part or whole, to sustain 
my unconscionable carcass. There they stood in lines with 
solemn and reproachful faces — oxen and calves, sheep and 
lambs, deer, hares, rabbits, turkeys, ducks, chickens, pheas- 
ants, grouse, and partridges, down to the larks and sparrows 
and blackbirds, which I had shot when a boy and made into 
puddings. Every one of them had come up to bear 
witness against their murderer ; out of sea and river had 
come the trout and sahnon, the soles and turbots, the ling 
and cod, the whiting and mackerel, the smelts and white- 
bait, the oysters, the crabs, the lobsters, the shrimps. They 
seemed literally to be in millions, and I had eaten them all. 
I talked of wages. These had been my wages. At this 



A Siding at a Railway Station, 369 

enormous cost had my existence been maintained. A stag 
spoke for the rest. " We all," he said, " were sacrificed to 
keep this cormorant in being, and to enable him to produce 
the miserable bits of printed paper which are all that he 
has to show for himself. Our lives were dear to us. In 
meadow and wood, in air and water, we wandered harmless 
and innocent, enjoying the pleasant sunlight, the light of 
heaven and the sparkling waves ; we were not worth much ; 
we have no pretensions to high qualities. If the person 
who stands here to answer for himself can affirm that his 
value in the universe was equivalent to the value of all of 
us who were sacrificed to feed him, we have no more to 
say. Let it be so pronounced. We shall look at our 
numbers, and we shall wonder at the judgment, though we 
shall withdraw our complaint. But for ourselves we say 
freely that we have long watched him, — him and his 
fellows, — and we have failed to see in what the superiority 
of the human creature lies. We know him only as the 
most cunning, the most destructive, and, unhappily, the 
longest lived of all carnivorous beasts. His delight is in 
killing. Even when his hunger is satisfied he kills us for 
his mere amusement." 

The oxen lowed approval, the sheep bleated, the birds 
screamed, the fishes flapped their tails. I, for myself, stood 
mute and self-condemned. What answer but one was 
possible? Had I been myself on the bench I could not 
have hesitated. The fatal sentence of condemnation was 
evidently about to be uttered, when the scene became in- 
distinct, there was a confused noise, a change of condition, 
a sound of running feet and of many voices. I awoke ; I 
was again in the railway carriage ; the door was thrown 
open ; porters entered to take our things. We stepped out 
upon the platform. We were at the terminus for which we 
had been originally destined. Carriages and cabs were 
waiting; tall powdered footmen flew to the assistance of 
the duke and duchess. The station-master was standing 



370 A Siding at a Railway Station, 

hat in hand, and obsequiously bowing; the minister's 
private secretary had come to meet his right honorable 
chief with the red despatch-box, knowing the impatience 
with which it was waited for. The duke shook hands 
with the archbishop before he drove away. " Dine with 
us to morrow ? " he said. " I have had a very singular 
dream. You sliall be my Daniel and interpret it for me." 
The archbishop regretted infinitely that he must deny him- 
self the honor ; his presence was required at the Conference. 
" I, too, have dreamt," he said ; " but with your Grace and 
me the realities of this world are too serious to leave us 
leisure for the freaks of imagination." 



f 



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A/ 



